Kim Kardashian has issued a public plea for President Joe Biden to “stop another Armenian genocide,” asking the U.S. to protect Armenians from Azerbaijan.
In a Rolling Stone piece published Friday, the reality TV star urged Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “take a stand immediately” by bringing sanctions and cutting off foreign aid to Azerbaijan, writing that the country has blockaded “the only lifeline between the indigenous Christian Armenians of Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) and the rest of the world” since December.
“We are the descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors, and we do not want to be talking about the recognition or commemoration of yet another genocide in the future,” read the op-ed, which was co-written with physician Eric Esrailian.
Their message follows decades of conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that’s internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but is known to Armenians as the Republic of Artsakh.
The op-ed’s authors said that the blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road that connects Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, “has emboldened the autocratic Azeri government to use starvation as a weapon against the Armenian population in the region.”
“Blocking human rights groups, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the hateful rhetoric accompanying the blockade are signs of genocidal intent,” they wrote, asking Biden and Blinken to pressure Azerbaijan to open the corridor “without preconditions.”
“It is clear that this ruthless blockade has crossed all red lines of human rights and humanitarian law.”
The two also pointed to reports that attacks on Armenian soldiers have persisted, despite a cease-fire agreement after a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020.
The pair later said that American taxpayer dollars are “facilitating and enabling this behavior” via foreign aid to Azerbaijan.
“The United States has the ability to mobilize a response. Leaders who are effective and help our people will be remembered for their heroism,” they wrote. “The ones who are inert and ineffective will be remembered for allowing a genocide to take place under their watch. The choice is theirs.”
In the past, Kardashian has frequently advocated for formally recognizing the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire a century ago as a “genocide.” Biden did so in 2021.
You can read more from Kardashian’s op-ed here.