A suspicious note apparently referring to an ongoing geopolitical conflict in the Caucasus region was found at a church in Watertown, Massachusetts, Monday morning, police said.
The note discovered on a community board outside St. Stephen's Armenian Apostolic Church and reported to police about 8 a.m. read, "Artsakh is Dead," according to Watertown police.
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The note continued, "Karabakh is Azerbaijan," according to an image shared by the church on Monday.
"I don't know the purpose of it except to believe that it had to be somehow trying to intimidate us," Father Antranig Baljian, the archpriest at the church, told NBC10 Boston.
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Artsakh is the name that local Armenians give to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has long been disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Ethnic Armenians were leaving the region Monday as the Azerbaijani military reclaimed full control of the region.
The Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces in a 24-hour blitz last week, forcing the separatist authorities to agree to lay down weapons and start talks on Nagorno-Karabakh's "reintegration" into Azerbaijan after three decades of separatist rule.
While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in the region and restore supplies after a 10-month blockade, many local residents feared reprisals and said they were planning to leave for Armenia. The Armenian government said that 6,500 Nagorno-Karabakh residents had fled to Armenia as of Monday evening. Moscow said that Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh were assisting the evacuation.
In Watertown — which has a long history of Armenian immigration and remains important to Armenian-Americans — police said they were investigating the note left at the church and were stepping up patrols in the area.
"Please know that your police department will go to great lengths to ensure all community members feel welcome and safe in the City of Watertown," the department said in a statement, asking anyone with information about what happened to contact them at 617-972-6538 or by emailing kswift@police.watertown-ma.gov.
Baljian said that the members of the church understand that Azerbaijan has prevailed in the conflict in the region, but "now the worry is, as happened in 1915, when the Turks tried to eliminate the Armenians, this might happen again under the Azeris, who are a Turkic people and who claim that land for themselves."
He noted that the church houses pre-school programs and that parents have shared concerns for the children's safety in light of the conflict and, now, the note left at the church.
Baljian shared a message for whoever left the note: "You have every right to protest, to complain, to say whatever you want … but there's no right to deface property, to terrorize people and to, in a sense, put our children in jeopardy."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
