EPOCHTV
- Jan 2
- 13 min read

‘Heartbreak Land’: Baroness Caroline Cox on Going Where Even the Red Cross Won’t Go

“In middle Nigeria, they are attacking—frequently—the Christian villages and townships in the Middle Belt, and that’s gone on for some time, and the attacks are ruthless. And I’ve been to the villages that have suffered an attack from the Islamist Fulani herdsmen, and homes are still burning.”

In this episode, I sit down with Baroness Caroline Cox, a member of the British House of Lords and founder of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust.

“We have a mandate to heal the sick, feed the hungry, care for the oppressed … Ask God, each one of us, what He wants us to do to fulfill that mandate,” says Baroness Cox.

We survey the Baroness’s humanitarian work throughout the globe, and discuss the current political conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which has recently escalated into a dire situation.

Watch the clip:

“I became so concerned about what was really happening to the people from Armenia in this little land of Nagorno-Karabakh, that that began my engagement with that whole area,” says Baroness Cox. “The Armenians are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. All the ones that have had to flee, 100,000 from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia, they’ve had to leave everything behind.”

🔴 WATCH the full episode (22 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1230BaronnessCox

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek: Baroness Caroline Cox, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Baroness Caroline Cox: Thank you. It’s a great privilege to be here.

Mr. Jekielek: The privilege is mine, in fact. I’ve been following your humanitarian work for at least two decades. Let’s start there. Please tell us about yourself.

Baroness Cox: All I ever say about myself is I’m actually a nurse and a social scientist by intention, and a Baroness by astonishment. I was not born a Baroness. I was appointed to the House of Lords by Margaret Thatcher, and I was the first Baroness I had ever met. But it’s quite a shock because you find yourself in the House of Lords, which is like the upper house of your Congress. I thought, “How do I use this privilege?”

Then the idea came that it’s a wonderful place to be a voice for people whose voices are not heard. That’s how I tried to use my role there in the House of Lords, largely with humanitarian aid work for people suffering oppression and persecution and largely unreached by other aid organizations. In a different vein, I work on behalf of Muslim women in the United Kingdom who suffer from only having Sharia marriages and not legally-registered marriages, and that leaves them very vulnerable. Those are the two threads. Most of my time is with humanitarian work with our partners on the front lines of faith and freedom.

Mr. Jekielek: The people I remember are the ones who take very public, principled stands on issues that are decidedly unfashionable, and you stand out in that view. With the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, especially in the early years, the hate propaganda was thick and a lot of western media outlets were basically picking it up. There were very few people that were saying, “Irrespective of all that, this is wrong.” Thank you for that.

Baroness Cox: It’s a great privilege. I happen to be Christian and we have a mandate to be associated with people suffering oppression and persecution. That is a great privilege because they are often heroes and heroines on their front lines of faith.

Mr. Jekielek: You have been working for a long time on the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and the atrocities inflicted by the Azerbaijanis. Just recently there was a huge change in the reality of this particular region. I want to make sure I say it correctly,

Nagorno-Karabakh.

Baroness Cox: Well done.

Mr. Jekielek: You’re in D.C. to talk about this, so please tell us about it.

Baroness Cox: Indeed. Armenia was the first nation to become Christian as early as 301 AD. There are some of the oldest Christian churches and traditions in the world in Armenia. Then Stalin with his Salami Tactics cut off part of ancient Armenia, Christian Armenia, and stuck it into an oblast inside Azerbaijan. That little oblast or bit of ancient Armenia isolated in Azerbaijan is called Nagorno-Karabakh. It has some of the oldest churches in the world.

But relatively recently, Azerbaijan has increased its persecution of the Christians living in that little land, and it’s been on and off for many years. In December of last year, Azerbaijan cut off the road which links Armenia to this little land of Nagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan. It’s the only route by which medical supplies and food could come in.

Armenians were suffering very badly in Nagorno-Karabakh for much of this year. I’ve seen a photograph of one man who died of starvation. I’m sure many people suffered really seriously; elderly people, babies, and pregnant women. Then Azerbaijan upped the aggression against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh when it began bombing them. It has bombed them before, but then bombed them again. The Armenians really had to flee for their lives and this began the process of what is legitimately called ethnic cleansing.

Over 100,000 Armenians had to flee from Azerbaijan into Armenia itself, taking only what they could carry. They couldn’t take their possessions from their homes and just flee into Armenia, and that was just very recently. That ethnic cleansing has left that little land of Nagorno-Karabakh bereft, and only about 40 Armenians are still there. It is a very serious and tragic situation.

It’s a very difficult situation and 100,000 Armenians have had to flee from their homeland into Armenia. Armenia is not a big country nor a wealthy country, and it’s now had this huge influx of people. There is another aspect which is very serious and needs a lot of prayer, if I may say so.

Azerbaijan has also captured and imprisoned quite a lot of innocent Armenians. There were some from the previous, short war in the year 2020, and there were some prisoners of war from that time. But more recently, they have abducted and imprisoned civilians and some leaders that I know personally. There needs to be a lot of pressure on Azerbaijan to release those prisoners that they are holding illegally.

Mr. Jekielek: Because the changes that happened recently are dramatic, what is your involvement in that region? Also, please tell us about your organization, HART [Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust], which goes to places that the Red Cross will not go to.

Baroness Cox: Very briefly, how HART became involved with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh goes way back, because I’m very old, a long time ago. I was at a very big international human rights conference in Moscow. It was probably the first human rights conference to be held in Moscow after the emergence of Russia from the Soviet Union.

There was a very famous person there, and her name may be familiar, Yelena Bonner Sakharov. Her husband was a very famous human rights activist, Andrei Sakharov, who had passed away. Yelena Bonner Sakharov was a wonderful, inspirational person who was passionate about human rights. She told us about the situation in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Long story short, I was asked to lead an international delegation down to the area.

It was the first time that I had visited Armenia. We visited there and heard about what the people were suffering in this little land of Nagorno-Karabakh. We actually did go up and walk across the border with no prior permission. It was a bit risky going into Azerbaijan, but we always have to hear two points of view. If you don’t get two points of view, a lot of the media won’t cover you, because they would think it was partisan.

We actually did walk across the border into Azerbaijan, which was interesting. We were carrying some white flags, which was also interesting, but we survived. That was my first time, and I became so concerned about what was really happening to the people from Armenia in the little land of Nagorno-Karabakh. That began my engagement with that whole area. I have since traveled there many times. I don’t count, but I’ve been told by those who do count, that it’s 88 times into Nagorno-Karabakh, and 90 times into Armenia. There were two times that I couldn’t go into Karabakh.

Mr. Jekielek: It might not be obvious to people why there is this hostility. Do you have a sense of why?

Baroness Cox: Unfortunately, Azerbaijan has a track record of hostility and of brutal treatment. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan has declared his intention to annex Nagorno-Karabakh entirely, but also to annihilate Armenians who are living there. More recently, he has threatened to invade Armenia itself.

Azerbaijan is extremely wealthy with oil and other resources, has very well-resourced military capacity, and they’re already building up quite worryingly along the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It has carried out military offensives against the Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh and it is extremely serious.

But President Aliyev has said that Azerbaijan will occupy Armenia itself, along with Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. He has actually said that Lake Sivan, a beautiful lake historically inside Armenia, would belong to Azerbaijan. It is important to challenge President Aliyev’s lies with the truth.

Mr. Jekielek: It’s a kind of a land grab then. Is that how you view it?

Baroness Cox: Certainly with its intention, Azerbaijan has already succeeded in taking Nagorno-Karabakh and driving the ethnic Armenians out. In September, not so long ago, I was in Armenia and visited a long-established Armenian town called Goris, which goes up against the border of Azerbaijan.

From that town, up a hillside you could see an encampment by Azerbaijan that was already there. There were three Azerbaijan encampments there with impunity. They are really getting away with encroaching into Armenian sovereign territory with impunity, and that’s very worrying.

Mr. Jekielek: What is your intention here?

Baroness Cox: We’re trying to raise both aid and advocacy. As I mentioned earlier, the Armenians are in desperate need of humanitarian aid. The 100,000 that had to flee from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia had to leave everything behind, so they are in great need.

But we also have one particular focus in that we have a hero, and I call him a hero of peace. His name is Vardan Tadevosyan and he established a rehabilitation center inside Nagorno-Karabakh. The rehabilitation center that he developed with his staff was so superb. It became internationally renowned as a center of excellence and people came from around the world to see it.

When I was there, not long ago, there was someone there from Japan who came to see it. People from Africa also came to see it. Vardan had to leave, which was heartbreaking, but he hopes to re-establish another center of excellence inside Armenia itself. That’s going to need funding.

We are trying to raise money for a new rehabilitation center for people with disabilities. It will be a replacement for the one that is stranded in Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia itself. It will actually be very good for Armenia’s reputation as well. It’s very, very precious. That’s the humanitarian side.

On the advocacy side, we are trying to encourage nations and pressure groups and people who respect and cherish freedom and truth to be advocates for freedom and truth, and to call Azerbaijan to account for its appalling annihilation of the Armenian existence in the little land of Nagorno-Karabakh and their threats to extend their role into Armenia itself. We are here for advocacy, and also advocacy for those people who are imprisoned in Azerbaijan who desperately need to be freed.

Mr. Jekielek: What has the response been?

Baroness Cox: Here? The response has been wonderful. People have received us very graciously and responded very positively. I do raise these issues in the British Parliament. I know they have been raised in the U.S. Congress. I hope that we will receive funding that is desperately needed for the rehabilitation center and for the Armenians who had to flee, leaving everything behind them. We need aid and advocacy.

Mr. Jekielek: Please tell us about HART, your organization. What does it mean to go to a place where the Red Cross won’t go?

Baroness Cox: I was appointed to the House of Lords in 1983, I can’t believe it, 40 years ago. In the early decade, I did a lot of work for Poland, because Poland was in the very dark days of martial law in those days. I did a lot of work for a very good organization, the Medical Aid for Poland fund. We took in medical aid and went in many times on the trucks speaking for the Polish people who were suffering at the hands of communism. That country emerged, praise God, into freedom in 1989.

Then I did a lot of work in Russia with Soviet orphans who were having a rough time and helped to establish programs for enabling children to be kept in care homes or homes for orphaned children. Then I decided that I wanted to diversify, so I founded HART. It stands for Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust. HART was established to provide aid and advocacy for people suffering persecution and oppression in areas not reached by other major aid organizations, either for political reasons or security reasons.

I have great respect for the big organizations like the UN, but they can only go in with the permission of a sovereign government. If a sovereign government is victimizing a minority within its own borders, and if it doesn’t give them permission, then they can’t go in. We do spend quite a lot of our time going in unofficially. We work with local partners and they are the heroes and heroines.

On the security side, most of them are in war zones or conflict zones of some kind, and it’s quite dangerous getting there. Other aid organizations are quite rationally a bit nervous about going in. I can understand that because of their staff and their whole raison d'etre. But we do go where it may be politically incorrect and where it may be dangerous. A lot of our partners are in conflict zones in areas where they’re not supported by their national governments. We do provide aid and advocacy to the many who are suffering violations of human rights.

Mr. Jekielek: Do you have one particular success story that you would like to share from all these years of doing this work?

Baroness Cox: That’s a good question. Yes, I think we do. In one or two of the areas where we worked with HART, we now no longer need to work there. Because when we first started there, the population of civilians suffered from the criteria which HART tries to address. One of those early areas was in northern Uganda. We went there in the dark days when the Lord’s Resistance Army was active and attacking civilians. It was hell on earth, I can tell you. The first time I went there with a good colleague, it was really dangerous getting there, and it was dangerous when we were there.

But we ask the local people, “What’s your priority?” We always ask people their priority. We don’t tell them what we’re going to do. We ask them because they know their own priorities. They said, “Please help the orphans. There are so many orphans because the parents have been killed and have had to flee.” They were just little skeletons. Long story short, we managed to provide food aid and other aid for those orphans. We also helped find parental care for those orphans in a holistic way.

If you go there now, I can’t believe it. Here’s just one little vignette. Those kids are now teenagers. Recently, there was a football tournament in Africa, and a lot of African countries took part. A little team from our orphan program took part and they won the tournament. They were so talented that the United States chose one of those teenage football players to go to the states to develop in a proper, professional football program. Britain also selected another young player.

Going from little orphans who were like little skeletons to being such competent football players in their teens that they were actually selected to represent their countries and go to other countries for training is an example. We no longer need that orphan program now. It has been successful, and all the orphans have been happily placed with families. That was a very happy outcome to a very tragic situation.

Mr. Jekielek: We get so caught up in the many big issues, but the little small wins for these kids makes all the difference. Thank you for sharing that. You do advocate for places where you can’t easily inspect the situation. You were involved in the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. You’ve actually taken your own government to task around the forced organ harvesting issue.

Baroness Cox: I mentioned aid and advocacy, and they are obviously closely entwined. But there are issues where we do need to defend freedom and fundamental values, and that’s part of a Christian mandate, and also part of HART’s mandate. One of the areas where we border between the controversial and the fundamental principles is Nigeria. We do a lot of work in Middle Belt Nigeria. The Islamist Fulani always make a distinction between Islam and Islamism. Islam means Muslims, our Muslim friends. Islamism means the Islamists, and they are the ones who carry out the brutal attacks.

In middle Nigeria, they frequently attack the Christian villages and townships in the Middle Belt, and that’s gone on for some time. The attacks are ruthless. I’ve been to the villages that have suffered an attack from the Islamist Fulani herdsman when the homes were still burning. I have seen the corpses before they’re buried, and it is a hell on earth.

On one occasion when I was there they were just recovering from an attack. I met a young mother and she had tried to flee with her little six-year-old daughter, but the village had been surrounded by the Islamist Fulani. They couldn’t escape and they were caught. They slashed her across the shoulder with a machete, and then they cut her little daughter’s throat. She fainted after having been attacked by the machete.

When she woke up her little six-year-old daughter was lying dead next to her, and inside the little daughter’s mouth was her mother’s finger. They cut her mother’s finger off and stuck it inside her mouth. This is a heartbreaking land.

Those attacks on Christian villages in Middle Belt Nigeria are still going on. We always ask the local people and they said that the children of these one-and-a-half million people displaced from these villages and little townships are desperate for education. We have the Roads to Hope education vans, and we take educational supplies to those kids who are displaced.

You could see the joy on the kids’ faces when these education vans arrived. It’s not just books, it’s computers and all sorts of things they need for proper education. Here’s hope for the future, and what a privilege to be able to do that. We’re now just diversifying into providing healthcare vans for the displaced people in Middle Belt Nigeria.

Mr. Jekielek: We’ve covered this whole situation extensively. It’s hard to fathom another one of these realities that people just don’t know about. Maybe they don’t want to know about it because it’s so horrific and it continues to this day.

Baroness Cox: Absolutely. It’s happening while we’re talking here today.

Mr. Jekielek: Baroness Cox, it’s such a pleasure to speak with you. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Baroness Cox: Those of us who have freedom and those who have relatively plenty, we do have an obligation to share what we have with those people who are suffering and dying from starvation or from lack of medical care. We must learn to look beyond our comfort zone and to be alongside those people. Obviously, in prayer, we have a mandate to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and care for the oppressed. My passion would be for each one of us to ask God what he wants us to do to fulfill that mandate.

Mr. Jekielek: Baroness Caroline Cox, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Baroness Cox: It’s been a privilege to be with you. Thank you for letting me share the pain and the passion and the privilege of being able to make a little bit of a difference. Thank you.

Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Baroness Caroline Cox and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.