On September 19, at Yerablur Military Pantheon, 75-year-old Lida, the mother of fallen Artsakh hero Davit Arushanyan, staged a solo protest. At the Call of Artsakh memorial, she burned a photo of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan holding a book by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as well as photos of Anna Hakobyan with the wives of Ilham Aliyev and Erdoğan. She shared the act in a Facebook video.
While burning them, she expressed two wishes: “to see the end of traitors and Artsakh liberated.”
“Every time I want to do something to ease the pain of this burning injustice and helplessness. And each time, I apologize to my Davit for resorting to such actions. But what can I do? Politicians are silent, part of the people are indifferent. What else should I do to make them realize that the country is being destroyed piece by piece? Maybe you’ll say this woman has lost her mind. Maybe. It’s hard to witness all this and stay sane,” she said in her post.
“I am 75 years old. This is all I can do. If each of us does something, even something small, in this field, it will show we are not indifferent, not in agreement, and that we fight against the Turk, that we have not forgotten or betrayed,” she added.
She concluded: “I don’t ask much from God, only to see the end of the traitors, those who hate and destroy Armenians.”
On September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale offensive against Artsakh, bombarding the entire territory. The following day, Artsakh’s authorities accepted a ceasefire proposed by Russian peacekeepers, agreeing to Baku’s conditions of disarmament and dissolution. Starting September 24, more than 100,000 Armenians were forcibly displaced to Armenia. By late September only about 20 Armenians reportedly remained in Artsakh. On September 28, Artsakh’s president Samvel Shahramanyan signed a decree on the dissolution of the republic, effective January 1, 2024.
