You are obligated both as the President of the country and as a man: Ara Babloyan addresses Aliyev in an open letter

Former Minister of Health and former Chairman of the National Assembly Ara Babloyan has written an open letter to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

“Open Letter to Ilham Aliyev

I am compelled to write this open letter to you considering several circumstances. As a pediatric surgeon, I have operated and saved thousands of children, among them hundreds of Azerbaijani children, when we were all citizens of the same country. As the Minister of Health of Armenia, I have done everything possible to prevent measles outbreaks in our region, including Azerbaijan, offering the necessary batch of measles vaccine to the Minister of Health of Azerbaijan. As the Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia, I made a statement noting that it is unacceptable for young people aged 18-20 to die on both the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides, solely because we cannot solve issues through peaceful political means.

With this letter, I wish to remind you of your promise and to emphasize that you are obliged to uphold it, both as the President of the country and as a man. You conditioned the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh to lay down their arms and dissolve their state structures in exchange for promising amnesty for everyone, a gesture that was positively welcomed by a number of leading states worldwide. Yet now, when people have laid down their arms preventing further casualties, the President of Nagorno-Karabakh has declared the dissolution of the state through a decree, nearly 100,000 Armenian residents have left Nagorno-Karabakh, and soon this territory will be handed over to you, you, unfortunately, have not declared an amnesty.

I hope that my letter will awaken a sense of dignity within you, and as a president who made promises, you will announce an amnesty now, without conditions, and not later after further tragedies and new humiliations.

Ara Babloyan
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor
29.09.2023
Yerevan, Armenia