Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First, I express condolences to our colleagues in Fianna Fáil on the very sad death of Damien O’Reilly.

I also wish a warm welcome to the Superintendent here today.

I am lucky enough to be one of the representatives in this Chamber in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In that regard, I have written two reports on the tragedy that continues to unfold in Nagorno-Karabakh.Most recently, at the June session, I highlighted the fact there was an ongoing blockade of the Lachin corridor, which is the only corridor that connects the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh back to the country of Armenia. It has been blockaded since the beginning of the year. That was effectively an attempt to starve and intimidate people into leaving. When that did not work, last week, unfortunately, Azerbaijan launched a full-scale military assault on those people. Hundreds were killed and we now see tens of thousands of people evacuating.

What we are seeing is ethnic cleansing happening once again in Europe. I regret that the response of western countries in particular has been just to express some words that what is happening is awful, but there have been no actions whatsoever. I met some of the people who were separated from their families in the town of Goris earlier this summer, who had no means of return to where they and their families had lived for hundreds of years. We are now seeing mass evacuations and horrific reports of explosions in residential buildings, the explosion of gasoline tanks, and all sorts of intimidation designed to drive people out of Nagorno-Karabakh.

I ask for a debate on this issue and a much stronger Government response. The West should be calling for sanctions due to a horrific regime led by Ilham Aliyev, which has no regard for human rights whatsoever.