On the morning of December 12, a group of Azerbaijanis closed the Shushi-Karin Tak section of the Stepanakert-Goris highway at 10:30, citing “environmental” reasons.
The Azerbaijani government media mentioned that the blockaders were “environmental activists” demanding that government officials from Baku inspect two gold mines in Artsakh.
Hundreds of Armenian citizens, including minors, couldn’t return home, and some temporarily moved to the Syunik region. The traffic between the villages of Lisagor, Mets Shen, Hin Shen and Yegtsahogh of Shushi region with the capital city Stepanakert was interrupted.
Earlier, negotiations were held after officials from the Azerbaijani Ministries of Environment and Economy blocked the same road section on December 3, stating that they wanted to investigate “illegal mining activity” in Artsakh and its “ecological consequences”.
Artsakh’s leadership insisted that it has been properly monitoring the work of the local gold mining company. Baku is simply trying to disrupt Artsakh’s overland communication with Armenia, thus causing the ethnic Armenian population to emigrate en masse.
President Arayik Harutyunyan urged the Armenians of Artsakh to “maintain their calmness” in the face of what he called the “ethnic cleansing attempted by Baku”.
On the other hand, Armenia’s government denounced the Azerbaijani actions through Edmon Marukyan, an ambassador-at-large. Marukyan called it a “gross violation” of the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
https://en.armradio.am/2022/12/13/goris-stepanakert-road-artsakhs-lifeline-blocked-for-13-hours/
https://www.azatutyun.am/a/32172667.html
