YEREVAN, DECEMBER 15, ARMENPRESS. A group of children from Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) visiting Armenia to watch the 2022 Junior Eurovision in Yerevan are unable to return home due to the ongoing Azerbaijani blockade of Artsakh.

The children have been accommodated in Goris and are impatiently waiting to be reunited with their families.

ARMENPRESS spoke with Aida Gyanjumyan, the Advisor of the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport who supervises the children.

“This is a provocation, Azerbaijan’s signature isn’t changing, their goal is the exodus of Armenians from Artsakh, to deprive the children of Artsakh from their right to live, right to free movement and right to education. The children were supposed to return and pass semester exams with their friends in school, but everything is disrupted,” she said, adding that their only desire is to live in Artsakh and develop their ancestral land.

Gyanjumyan says the group left Yerevan at 10:00 in the morning of December 12 and they were on the road when they learned about the blocking. “After over five hours, when we saw that there is no news and it was already evening, we thought about accommodating at a hotel. One of the parents of the children who has friends in Goris organized it and we went to the Mirhav hotel in Goris,” Gyanjumyan said.

Among the 16 children of the group is 11-year-old Yulia Shirinyan, a junior weightlifting champion. She told ARMENPRESS that she misses her home. “It’s already a few days that I am away from home and my parents, we speak all the time but I miss them.”