as of this moment i'm an
international fugitive by filming this
scene on this patch of dirt
i'll be joining the ranks of hundreds of
journalists and politicians
who just wanted to come and witness a
world between masters
a war zone and if i said i was a tourist
and that i was confused and that i
completely agree to azerbaijan's natural
right to this land
they might just let me get away with it
i might slip under the radar
but i'm not going to do that so for the
rest of my life
a dictatorship with a litany of human
rights abuses
is going to be waiting to throw me in
prison because that's what it takes
to tell this story and if that's what
they'll do
to me imagine what it's like living here
[Music]
what gives you the right to live where
you are
to sell your land to grow your crops to
raise your children in a place that you
think is yours
what gives you that right it might sound
like a complicated answer but it's
actually quite simple
it's force guns
every law we've ever made every
agreement we've ever come to every
nation
carved out of the dust it's all guns
might makes right no matter how peaceful
your nation may be
the only reason you're there is because
of guns
the people of karabakh understand a
world where force can take away
everything in an instant they're
indigenous to this region and have
likely lived here for over ten thousand
years
this area of the caucasus is so closely
associated with their inhabitation that
it's deemed greater armenia in almost
every language on earth
whether you call it ararat airmen
meaning armenia or hike
they've been here so long that the old
testament treats them as ancient
armenians fought babylon they fought
pompei magnus and alexander of macedon
they fought genghis khan
tamerlan and the mem lukes they trembled
before the ottomans in stalinist russia
their entire history is a history of
dying so that other people can live
and within that world of war the region
of karabakh
is the only place where they've never
been completely forced from their land
well elsewhere in the region that bears
their name exile and genocide have
driven them from their ancestral homes
in the karabakh they've never truly left
the people here call themselves donkeys
because they're so stubborn
nobody tells them what to do not even
mother armenia
the eu doesn't recognize them as a
nation russia doesn't recognize them as
a nation the u.s doesn't recognize them
as a nation
but they're still here and if you want
to remove them
you're going to need some serious guns
unfortunately azerbaijan has those guns
and they're not afraid
to use them because they too think this
land is theirs
and they've spent more money than
armenia could ever dream of to convince
the governments of the world
that they're right to understand how it
got to this point though let's go back a
bit in history
although this story goes back thousands
of years and this region has seen
independence and destruction on loop a
dozen times or more
for the sake of brevity i'm going to
focus on the last few generations alone
at the outset of world war 1 and the
russian revolution armenians faced a
historically difficult situation
to the east a turkish nationalist
uprising had started a slaughter of
minorities so brutal
it led to the creation of the word
genocide to the south a collapsed
persian empire that had once served as a
protector of the armenian people
was crushed by the weight of its own
internal divisions
and to the north the russian revolution
was in full swing
replacing the dictatorial czar with a
dictatorial soviet
in the middle of this were a people with
a little identity to call their own
they'd spent so long in other empires
split between rulers that they barely
saw themselves as a people
the genocide changed that depending on
who you believe ottomans killed between
30 and 70 percent of all armenians
and yet even with those numbers people
from just a few hundred miles away would
have been completely unaware it was even
happening
it remains one of the most denied
atrocities in history
turkey is so opposed to it becoming
internationally recognized that they
even murdered one of their own
journalists for suggesting
reconciliation
in 2007 no less but as awful as it was
it hardened those who survived it the
armenians have a saying
we fight ourselves until the knife
touches the bone
then we unite and in the face of mass
ethnic cleansing
a people separated by borders language
and history
began to once again see themselves as
united
the knife was touching the bone and out
of this garden watered with blood
a hero arose garrigan nezhda is perhaps
the most important man in modern
armenian history
he was the nationalist spark that lit
the fire of independence
his writings actions and political will
aimed to stave off the complete collapse
of his people
and to create a state to call their own
it would be no exaggeration to say that
his writings changed the world
hundreds of thousands of armenians who'd
imagined themselves as nothing more than
soviets
woke up to their identity for armenians
in moscow baku
turkey america argentina and everywhere
else they'd been exiled
his words rang out like a bell come
together
defend your people fight until you're
free
and for the briefest few months in 1921
he'd run an independent republic here in
the hills
but as strong as nejde was he couldn't
change the world
a few thousand civilian soldiers cannot
stop a superpower no matter how
zealous they are but that didn't mean he
ran
this wasn't a politician in exile
telling his boys back home to die for
his cause
he was leading from the front lines and
he would fight anyone who took away his
idea of independence
he fought the turks with the czar and he
fought the soviets with hitler
it didn't matter who his allies were so
long as they said when the dust settled
his people would have a homeland but
promises are nothing without the guns to
back them up
and no foreign nation was willing to
spill their blood for the karabakh
for the next decade change came rapidly
to the caucasus setting the basis for a
conflict
that rages right up to the modern day as
the russian revolution pulled back the
armies of the czar
age old ethnic clashes began to crop up
in eastern armenia and azerbaijan
british oil interests had long since led
them to ally with the azeri and war
politics were nothing if not harsh
the british designated karabakh a
disputed territory and agreed to look
the other way if the azerbaijani felt
they wanted to make it theirs
in turn they expected them to hold back
the oncoming soviets when the time came
it was nearly 95 armenian
but it wasn't as simple as a british
decree the world war may have ended but
here
war was only beginning in the face of an
ongoing genocide in the west nezhde and
his local donkeys disagreed wholesale to
the loss of their historic homeland in
the east
they were ready to fight to the death
and the british and azerbaijani would
make them live up to their word
in 1920 the karabakh capital of shusha
then one of the most prosperous towns
in the entire trans caucuses was raised
to the ground
its entire population raped and murdered
on the spot
within all this turmoil soviets with the
backing of an up-and-coming joseph
stalin began eyeing the old empire of
the czar
and sent the red army down through the
caucasus to gain favor with the
armenians they promised the return of
karabakh in exchange for support and
soldiers
but like most things in communist russia
what was promised didn't quite meet
reality
the new leader of nationalist turkey
commonly known as ataturk had hinted
that he might make friends with the
isolated soviet russian government
and in turn they felt like they might
make a good communist out of him
so in spite of historic ties a near 100
armenian population and the communist
central committee having voted
the day before to unite it with armenia
on july 5th
1921 stalin handed the region of
karabakh to the newly created
heavily turkic soviet azerbaijan it was
a decision that surely everyone knew
would end in bloodshed
for the next 60 years the armenians
watched as azerbaijani settlers came to
set up a life in the karabakh
a land they would soon too call their
home and for 60 years the armenians
protested
only to be crushed again and again by
the unapologetic red army
in 1988 as soviet power was coming to a
close the armenians began a protest
that would rip the scar into an open
wound
pogroms extrajudicial murder and open
hostility
were everywhere there were no good guys
from eastern armenia to azerbaijan
sweeping from stepanak
down to baku ethnic cleansing that had
been dormant for generations was brought
back to the surface
the soviets didn't intervene they waited
until it was all
said and done after all they just wanted
to control the government
they didn't really care for the people
hundreds of thousands of refugees fled
to the region
most likely to keep them alive armenians
azzari yazidi tatar georgians persians
all of them they made the hard choice
you run or you die
in 1991 as the soviet union collapsed
around them the remaining people of
nagorno-karabakh held a referendum
to form an independent state with the
azeri abstaining the vote was nearly
unanimous
but while the republics of the soviet
union were in theory allowed to vote
themselves into existence
they'd never considered the karabakh a
republic on paper it belonged to
azerbaijan
and even though russia now worried about
an islamic state would send troops to
fight for the armenians
they wouldn't recognize their right to
art sock fear of turkish intervention
was so strong that not even armenia
would recognize their fledgling little
brother in the east
the republic was deemed illegal and the
azeri declared war
it was a war that they'd lose nearly 30
years after the outset of that war and
the borders remain roughly as they ever
were
multiple years of total blockade
fighting with handmade weapons against
jihadist mercenaries from across the
muslim world
and yet they've barely moved an inch
azerbaijan's military budget is larger
than the entire gdp of art sock yet they
still can't take this land
the human rights abuses are constant
without end
the azeri have enlisted the help of men
coming back from their time in isis
bringing with them the horrible lessons
of syria and iraq
it's become commonplace for them to
carve up the living soldiers they
capture
sending back their bodies while posting
facebook photos of their severed heads
they've systematically destroyed
cultural artifacts in ancient churches
they know history supports the armenians
so they destroy the history
they've dropped mines with colorful
ribbons attached meant to be picked up
by
children colloquially naming them after
kinder surprise eggs
elderly citizens are being murdered in
their homes by special forces
and the azeri dictatorship is giving
medals to those who commit these
atrocities
but for all the terror they've caused
it's backfiring
what they can't see is that an animal
fights harder the further it's pushed up
against the wall
just ask these donkeys today
not a single country on earth recognizes
the republic of artsok
the rights of the people of karabakh
simply aren't as important as the
geopolitics of superpowers
the u.n may say that indigenous people
have rights but to quote joseph stalin
how many divisions do they have baku has
oil and lots of it turkeys in nato
they're fighting in syria and they
control the flow of refugees to europe
nobody is trading that alliance for a
few thousand people in the hills
so the republic of artsoc waits
they bide their time building the
trappings of a state
they've built museums and statues
they've built children's playgrounds and
universities
they've built a foreign ministry because
they're waiting for the world to change
and they believe that someday people
will see them for what they
are they believe that someday history
will matter
but until that day they're going to be
right here
defending what's theirs with a gun
this is rare earth
[Music]
you