California Assembly Passes Resolution Approving Ethnic Cleansing

The Armenian National Committee of America pushed

California’s joint resolution on N.K.R.

The California state assembly passed a resolution on May 8th to recognize the sovereignty of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.) (a.k.a. Artsakh Republic), an Armenian puppet state which the newly independent Armenia’s military, with the help of Russian forces, carved out of the newly independent Azerbaijan in the early 1990s in the wreckage of the imploded Soviet Union.

After the vote, California legislators posed with delegates from the N.K.R.

The N.K.R. is not recognized as independent by any recognized independent country, not even by its patron, the Republic of Armenia, but symbolic resolutions have been passed recognizing it in various local legislatures and city councils in the vast Armenian diaspora, including the legislatures of Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island and of New South Wales in Australia, and, just last month, the city council of Los Angeles.  The California vote was expected.  The state has hundreds of thousands, some say almost a million, ethnic Armenians, mostly concentrated in greater Los Angeles.  There are, for example, only three cities in Armenia itself that have more Armenian residents than just one L.A. suburb, Glendale.  By contrast, there is only a negligible number of Azeri-Americans.

The California resolution passed with a vote of 70 to 1.  The only “no” vote was by Rocky Chávez, a Republican representing Oceanside, a San Diego suburb.  Armenian pressure groups play a huge role in pushing through symbolic pro-N.K.R. resolutions around the world, especially in the United States.  California’s Armenian diaspora also provides funding and support to the N.K.R.

Paid for in Moscow, planned in Yerevan,
carried out in Khojaly, applauded in Sacramento

Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 people died in the Nagorno-Karabakh War from 1991 to 1994, most of them killed by the Armenian military, which was aided by mercenaries from Russia and elsewhere and tacitly and covertly backed by Russia.  Thousands of Azeris were expelled from Azerbaijani territory to make room for Armenian settlement, and thousands of Kurds were cleansed from the Lachin corridor, which was not part of the Nagorno-Karabakh region but was conquered in order to provide a land bridge between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and is now part of the N.K.R. Many see the Nagorno-Karabakh War as Armenian revenge for the genocide of Armenians by Anatolian Turks in the early 20th century (which the Turkish government still denies) and compensation for Armenian lands farther west lost to the Turkish Republic after the First World War.  Azeris speak a Turkic language and are often called “Turks.”

California is in lock-step with the Armenian army.

But, as discussed in a recent article in this blog, the overt and covert war against Ukraine by Russia, Armenia’s strongest ally, may be changing the dynamics of the N.K.R. issue.  Armenia was one of only 11 countries to back Russia’s annexation of Crimea earlier this year in a United Nations vote (as reported in this blog), alongside pariah nations like North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.  Azerbaijan, like Turkey, is a U.S. ally, and the Armenian government, which has signed onto President Vladimir Putin’s “Eurasian Union” trade bloc established as a rival to the European Union (E.U.), is openly hoping that the Kremlin will formally recognize the N.K.R. and possibly help Armenia expand its borders in other aggressive ways as a way of extending its own influence.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto spearheaded the N.K.R. resolution.

Last month, as reported in this blog, Azerbaijani lobbyists succeeded in defeating a similar N.K.R.-recognition bill in Vermont, and they have pushed anti-N.K.R. legislation in Hawaii, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming.

Armenians demonstrate in Los Angeles with the Nagorno-Karabakh flag

After the California vote, Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian, a Democrat from the L.A. suburb of Burbank, whose grandparents fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region in pre-Soviet days, told the chamber, “This is one of those issues, probably one of the hallmark issues, that’s led me to want to serve in public service and to be here. This has been the tormented history of a group of people who have been very determined to pursue their freedom.”

After the First World War, Armenia was supposed to be a large independent state;
the Young Turks killed that idea.

The Republic of Armenia’s expansionist aims are increasingly piggy-backed onto Putin’s quest to rebuild the Soviet Union and restart the Cold War, but apparently that news hasn’t yet reached Sacramento.  If the crisis in Ukraine continues to lurch toward war, more Californian assemblymen and assemblywomen may wish they had voted with Rocky Chávez.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Related articles from this blog:
“Vermont Snub on Karabakh May Signal Crimea Crisis Has Derailed Armenian-American Pressure-Politics Gravy Train” (April 2014)
“Rogues’ Gallery: Everyone Seems to Be against Crimea’s Annexation, but Who’s for It?; or, What Do Kim Jong-un and Ron Paul Have in Common?” (April 2014)
“The Power of Pressure Groups: 3 California Lawmakers Advocate Nagorno-Karabakh Independence” (Oct. 2012)
“Massachusetts Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic!” (Aug. 2012)
“The Armenian Genocide Debate: Turkey, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Politics of Memory” (April 2012)