A top-level European Commission diplomat sparked online indignation after promoting multiple tourist hotspots in Azerbaijan on his personal Twitter account, despite warnings by the International Criminal Court (ICC) this week that Azeri forces are conducting a genocide of trapped ethnic Armenians in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Lawrence Meredith, the EU Commission’s Director for Neighbourhood East, which primarily focuses on the Caucuses, angered Armenian activists after making a Twitter thread highlighting various tourist attractions in Azerbaijan, including the nation’s capital, Baku, and Zoroastrian fire temples.
The EU has been accused of a lacklustre response to Azerbaijan’s ongoing persecution of Armenians marooned in the disputed Lachin corridor, with aid agencies estimating that approximately 120,000 civilians are trapped with limited food supplies following the commencement last December of an Azeri blockade.
Azerbaijan, with the material assistance of Turkey, has taken advantage of its traditional adversary Armenia since a border war in 2021 saw a massive land transfer to Baku. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, there have been near-constant irredentist disputes over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
According to a report for the International Criminal Court, “there is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed” as starvation is utilised as a weapon of war by Azeri forces hoping to purge Armenians from the Lachin corridor.
Meredith, who has served as director of the EU’s Caucuses policy since 2015, attracted online criticism. One former advisor at the European Parliament, Diogo Pinto, described Meredith as “an overpaid EU official promoting a despicable dictatorship, which is starving the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh in defiance of the ICJ, the UN, the Council of Europe, and the EU itself.”
Other commentators snidely pointed out the hypocrisy of Meredith’s prominent display of the Ukrainian flag on his profile, and his seeming willingness to overlook Azeri aggression in Nagorno-Karabakh.
A strategic need to maintain vital Azeri gas flow into Europe has muted the EU’s response towards the crisis, despite sending an observer team to the Lachin region earlier this year.
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has been brazen in his wish to ethnically cleanse Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, describing the influence of the Armenian diaspora on EU policymaking as a “cancerous tumour of Europe.”
A spokesperson for the European Commission said that Mr. Meredith’s tweets fell within the EU’s code of conduct for officials online, and that the thread on Azerbaijan was merely thematic and without political connotations.
