Kim Kardashian Pleads with Biden to Put an End to Armenian Persecution

Kim Kardashian is calling on President Joe Biden to address the reported conditions of ethnic Armenians under Azerbaijan’s occupation of the Upper Karabakh region.

The influencer wrote a commentary with Armenian American Dr. Eric Esrailian, a physician and Emmy-nominated film producer, calling for Biden and other world leaders to “stop the Armenian genocide.”

“We are Armenian. 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,” the pair wrote Friday in Rolling Stone.

According to Kardashian and Esrailian, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s government has used “starvation as a weapon against the Armenian population” through its blockade of Upper Karabakh.

The area, also known as Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh, is home to a majority Christian Armenian population and was annexed by Azerbaijan after a brief war in 2020.

Although internationally recognized as a part of Azerbaijan for years, the territory had been de-facto independent — governed by ethnic Armenians — since the end of the Cold War before its recent annexation.

“Regional peace should not involve sacrificing the sovereignty of the Armenians in Artsakh, but regardless of what anyone believes about our opinion, it is clear that this ruthless blockade has crossed all red lines of human rights and humanitarian law,” the letter read.

The two urged the Biden administration to use economic sanctions, slash foreign aid, boycott international events, and pursue International Criminal Court proceedings against the country and its officials.

It is not the first time Kardashian has called on the White House about Armenia.

Kardashian tried to get the Obama administration in 2015 to use the word “genocide” to describe the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish authorities 100 years before.

Then, in 2020, she pushed for the Trump administration to have a diplomatic response to Azerbaijan’s initial invasion of Upper Karabakh.