 | |
| Type | Online newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Mariam Nikuradze, Dominik K Cagara, and Caroline Sutcliffe |
| Editor-in-chief | Robin Fabbro [1] |
| Founded | January 2017 |
| Language | English and Russian |
| Website | English: OC-Media.org Russian OC-Media.org/RU/ |
OC Media (Open Caucasus Media) is an independent online news platform covering news from the North and South Caucasus regions.
OC Media is a Tbilisi-based website that publishes in English and Russian. The website was launched by journalists Mariam Nikuradze and Dominik K. Cagara and brings together journalists from throughout the Caucasus. [2] [3] [4]
The site covers the South Caucasus nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, Russia's North Caucasus republics, and the disputed territories of Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. [5] [6]
OC Media receives funding from different organizations and institutions as well as their readers. It has received funding from organizations such as UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Open Society Foundations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the European Endowment for Democracy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. [3]
In March 2020, Georgian rights group the Human Rights Education and monitoring centre (EMC) appealed to the government after an undercover investigation by OC Media revealed poor working conditions in several textile factories in the country. [7] [8] They called on the Department of Labour Inspection to immediately inspect garment factories and for Parliament to pass legislative changes to prevent future violations of workers’ rights.
In October 2020, the site was temporarily taken offline by a cyberattack. The outlet's management attributed the attack to their coverage of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. [9] [10] [11]
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region located in the South Caucasus, covering the southeastern stretch of the Lesser Caucasus mountain range. Part of the greater region of Karabakh, it spans between Lower Karabakh and Syunik. Its terrain mostly consists of mountains and forestland.
The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is a 1,768 kilometres (1,099 mi) long crude oil pipeline from the Azeri–Chirag–Gunashli oil field in the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. It connects Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and Ceyhan, a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, via Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. It is the second-longest oil pipeline in the former Soviet Union, after the Druzhba pipeline. The first oil that was pumped from the Baku end of the pipeline reached Ceyhan on 28 May 2006.
The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh backed by Armenia, and the Republic of Azerbaijan with support from Turkey. As the war progressed, Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet Republics, entangled themselves in protracted, undeclared mountain warfare in the mountainous heights of Karabakh as Azerbaijan attempted to curb the secessionist movement in Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave's parliament had voted in favor of uniting with Armenia and a referendum, boycotted by the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, was held, in which a majority voted in favor of independence. The demand to unify with Armenia began in a relatively peaceful manner in 1988; in the following months, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, it gradually grew into an increasingly violent conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, resulting in ethnic cleansing, including the Sumgait (1988) and Baku (1990) pogroms directed against Armenians, and the Gugark pogrom (1988) and Khojaly Massacre (1992) directed against Azerbaijanis. Inter-ethnic clashes between the two broke out shortly after the parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in Azerbaijan voted to unite the region with Armenia on 20 February 1988. The declaration of secession from Azerbaijan was the culmination of a territorial conflict. As Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union and removed the powers held by the enclave's government, the Armenian majority voted to secede from Azerbaijan and in the process proclaimed the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians, and seven surrounding districts, inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis until their expulsion during the 1990s. The Nagorno-Karabakh region is entirely claimed by and partially de facto controlled by the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, but is recognized internationally as part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan controls the remainder of the Nagorno-Karabakh region as well as the seven surrounding districts.
The Republic of Artsakh is a republic with limited recognition in the South Caucasus region. The Republic of Artsakh controls most of the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. It is recognized only by three other non-UN member states, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. The rest of the international community recognizes Artsakh as part of Armenia. In November 2012, a member of Uruguay's foreign relations committee stated that his country could recognize Nagorno-Karabakh's independence. In 2012, Armenia and Tuvalu established diplomatic relations and it was expected that Tuvalu may recognize Artsakh's independence. In October 2012, the Australian state of New South Wales recognized Nagorno-Karabakh. In September 2014, the Basque Parliament in Spain adopted a motion supporting Artsakh's right to self-determination and in November 2014, the Parliament of Navarre, also in Spain, issued a statement supporting Artsakh's inclusion in taking part in settlement negotiations.
Anti-Armenian sentiment, also known as anti-Armenianism and Armenophobia, is a diverse spectrum of negative feelings, dislikes, fears, aversion, racism, derision and/or prejudice towards Armenians, Armenia, and Armenian culture.
Thomas Patrick Lowndes de Waal is a British journalist and writer on the Caucasus. He is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. He is best known for his 2003 book Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War.
There are no diplomatic relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, largely due to the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The two neighboring states had formal governmental relations between 1918 and 1921, during their brief independence from the collapsed Russian Empire, as the First Republic of Armenia and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan; these relations existed from the period after the Russian Revolution until they were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union, becoming the constituent republics of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. Due to the three wars waged by the countries in the past century—one from 1918 to 1921, another from 1988 to 1994, and the most recent in 2020—the two have had strained relations. In the wake of ongoing hostilities, social memory of Soviet-era cohabitation is widely repressed.
Armenians in Azerbaijan are the Armenians who lived in great numbers in the modern state of Azerbaijan and its precursor, Soviet Azerbaijan. According to the statistics, about 500,000 Armenians lived in Soviet Azerbaijan prior to the outbreak of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1988. Most of the Armenian-Azerbaijanis however had to flee the republic, like Azerbaijanis in Armenia, in the events leading up to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, a result of the ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Atrocities directed against the Armenian population took place in Sumgait, Ganja and Baku. Today the vast majority of Armenians in Azerbaijan live in territory controlled by the break-away region Nagorno-Karabakh which declared its unilateral act of independence in 1991 under the name Nagorno-Karabakh Republic but has not been recognised by any country, including Armenia.
The Agdam Mosque or Juma Mosque is a mosque in the ghost town of Aghdam, Azerbaijan.
The EU Strategy for the South Caucasus is a long term strategy which is directed to create a secure political, economical and social environment next to the eastern borders of the European Union. This is an objective of the European Neighbourhood Policy, and forthcoming Eastern Partnership Program.
The siege of Stepanakert started in late 1991, during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, in Stepanakert, the largest city in Nagorno-Karabakh, when the Azerbaijani forces circled the city. Until May 1992, the city and its Armenian population were the target of a months-long campaign of bombardment by Azerbaijan. The bombardment of Stepanakert and adjacent Armenian towns and villages, which took place under the conditions of total blockade by Azerbaijan, caused widespread destruction and many civilian deaths.
The political status of Nagorno-Karabakh has remained unresolved since its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union on 10 December 1991. During Soviet times, it had been an ethnic Armenian autonomous oblast of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a conflict arose between local Armenians who sought to have Nagorno-Karabakh join Armenia, and local Azerbaijanis who opposed this.
The anti-Azerbaijani sentiment, or anti-Azerbaijanism has been mainly rooted in several countries, most notably in Armenia and Iran, where anti-Azerbaijani sentiment has sometimes led to violent ethnic incidents.
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was an armed conflict in 2020 that took place in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories. It was a major escalation of an unresolved conflict over the region, involving Azerbaijan, Armenia and the self-declared Armenian breakaway state of Artsakh. The war lasted for 44 days and resulted in Azerbaijani victory, with the defeat igniting anti-government protests in Armenia. Post-war skirmishes continued in the region, including substantial clashes in 2022.
The 2020 shelling of Ghazanchetsots Cathedral took place prior to the Battle of Shusha on 8 October, when the Holy Savior Cathedral of the city of Shusha, known as Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, was struck twice by missiles, resulting in the collapse of a part of the roof. Armenia accused the Azerbaijani Armed Forces over the shelling.
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement is an armistice agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. It was signed on 9 November by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, and ended all hostilities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region from 00:00, 10 November 2020 Moscow time. The president of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, Arayik Harutyunyan, also agreed to an end of hostilities.
The military forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a border conflict since 12 May 2021, when Azerbaijani soldiers crossed several kilometers into Armenia in the provinces of Syunik and Gegharkunik. Azerbaijan is currently occupying at least 50 square kilometres (19 sq mi) of Armenian territory. Azerbaijan has not withdrawn its troops from internationally recognised Armenian territory despite calls to do so by the European Parliament, United States and France – two of three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. Since the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan has made numerous incursions into Armenian territory.
The bombardment of Martuni was the bombardment of the cities, towns, and villages in the Martuni Province of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, which is de jure a part of Azerbaijan. It was carried out by Azerbaijani Armed Forces during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The city Martuni, along with the de facto capital Stepanakert, were badly damaged as a result of shelling. The shelling resulted in the deaths of five civilians. 1,203 buildings were damaged in the province as a result of the bombardment, according to Artsakh Urban Development Ministry. Victoria Gevorgyan, a resident of the Martuni Province of Nagorno-Karabakh, became the first child killed on the very first day of the war.
The blockade of the Republic of Artsakh is an ongoing event in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The region is disputed between Azerbaijan and the breakaway Republic of Artsakh, which has an indigenous Armenian population and is supported by neighbouring Armenia.