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The issue of defending the collective rights of the people of Artsakh, including their right to return to their homeland is a strategic goal, Artsakh’s former State Minister and Human Rights Defender Artak Beglaryan said Tuesday in an interview with News.am
“We should not allow the Armenian authorities to close this issue. It should be on the negotiating table with Azerbaijan. Without a clear position by the Armenian authorities, we will not achieve the result. They must emphasize that this does not mean territorial claims to Azerbaijan. The International Court of Justice made a relevant decision on the right of return of the Artsakh people,” Beglaryan said.
Beglaryan called the housing issue the most acute social problem for Artsakh residents.
“Based on these reasons, it is wrong to compare Artsakh residents with the residents of Armenia who are deprived of housing. Artsakh residents became displaced as a result of genocide due to the failure of Armenia to fulfill its commitments. Russia, France, the United States, and, in general, the whole international community also failed,” the former state minister explained.
“In addition, we have the status of refugees, for which Armenia has additional obligations. In our case, the source of funding is also different. Armenia should demand large sums of money from the international community to solve the social problems of the Artsakh people. Instead of that the Armenian authorities declare that they solve those problems in a spectacular way, giving a signal to the international community that there is no need for their support,” Beglaryan emphasized.
He explained that there is pressure on the Artsakh authorities from official Yerevan, saying this posturing is one of the reasons for the lack of public activity of Artsakh officials.
“This is related to different internal political fears of Armenian authorities, which becomes a reason for targeting Artsakh people and generating anti-Artsakh sentiments in the society.
Taking into account various risks, threats, and pressure, Artsakh officials behave with restraint in the public space,” Beglaryan explained.
Despite the lack of resources, which has slowed the ability for Artsakh authorities to operate. Despite this, however, Beglaryan said there have been contacts with foreign officials. He and former Artsakh Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan were recently in Washington, where they held meeting with members of Congress and participated in panels that outline the current plight of the people of Artsakh.
Beglaryan also sounded the alarm that official Yerevan may give up pursuing the complaints against in various international legal circles, if there is no tangible public resistance.
He said that the Armenian authorities are constantly making concessions to Azerbaijan without getting anything in return. The same thing happened in the Artsakh issue. “It is strange that they are not learning lessons from these mistakes,” Beglaryan said.
“We are essentially abandoning an important deterrent legal and diplomatic avenue. Azerbaijan continues its policy of hatred toward Armenians and pursues a policy of occupation against Armenia. Therefore, if we refuse to complain, Baku will continue to commit new crimes. Today’s crimes are a consequence of impunity for previous crimes. Such a decision of the Armenian authorities will support the criminal regime in Azerbaijan,” Beglaryan stressed.
The former Artsakh State Minister reminded that lawsuits have been filed against Azerbaijan both in the International Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.
“There is a need and possibility for filing new lawsuits with very strong factual and legal bases. As for the statements by the Armenian authorities that they will take such a step if Azerbaijan also drops its complaints, it is important to realize that these very complaints by Azerbaijan are groundless, unlike the Armenian cases. Baku filed a lawsuit to use it as a subject of political bargaining,” he explained.
He said he is actively cooperating with members of the Committee for the Protection of Fundamental Rights of the Artsakh People, headed by Armenia’s former foreign minister Vartan Oskanian.
“Active, effective co-operation is underway. I hope that the Committee will move to the stage of public activity. It is important that this Committee does not cast a shadow on Artsakh’s state institutions or take over their powers,” Beglaryan concluded.
Beglaryan announced that a rally will be held Wednesday, which will address the problems related to the needs of the people of Artsakh and will not be related to the internal political processes in Armenia.
The former state minister added that Artsakh authorities have declared their readiness to take part in the rally.
Beglaryan urged the Armenian authorities not to try to generate negative sentiments toward the people of Artsakh.
He noted that already since September 2023, “the propaganda machine of the Armenian authorities has been speculating that the Artsakh people have allegedly come to Armenia to carry out the change of power.”
In his assessment, this frankly hinders both the Artsakh people and the constructive internal political struggle in Armenia.
“It is necessary to fight for the state institutions of Artsakh to be preserved, and the Armenian authorities, as well as the international community, must reckon with them. The legitimacy of Artsakh’s state institutions must not be damaged. We will not pour water on this mill of the Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities,” Beglaryan concluded.
The post ‘Our Strategic Goal is to Return to Artsakh,’ Says Former State Minister Beglaryan first appeared on The South Caucasus News – The News And Times.
YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenia must cede more territory to Azerbaijan to avoid another attack by its neighbor, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told residents of Armenian border villages that would be gravely affected by that unilateral concession.
Pashinyan visited on Monday two of those villages in Armenia’s northern Tavush province, Voskepar and Kirants, that are adjacent to four deserted settlements occupied by the Armenian army in 1991-1992. He signaled last week his readiness to accept Baku’s demands for an unconditional Armenian withdrawal from those contested areas.
Pashinyan’s office released on Tuesday more excerpts from his comments made during meetings with local residents seriously concerned about the security of their families and communities. In a video publicized by the office, he essentially confirmed that in exchange for the Armenian withdrawal Azerbaijan would not liberate any Armenian territory occupied by it in the same area in the early 1990s.
“Our policy is that we must not allow the outbreak of a war,” Pashinyan told the villagers. “This is also a reason why we decided to opt for adjusting the border of Armenia at this section.”
“In this situation, it’s better for us to stand on our border and put forward demands for them to leave our territory than to stand beyond our border while knowing that they will use it as a target,” he said.
He claimed that failure to meet the Azerbaijani demands would “mean a war will break out at the end of the week.”
Many of the locals were unconvinced by that explanation. More of them said on Tuesday that they would lose access to their land, have trouble communicating with the rest of the country and be far more vulnerable from Azerbaijani armed attacks.
“[Pashinyan] said, ‘Here is my advice to you: we must settle this without fighting; or else, we will lose,’” one Voskepar resident told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“The [old] border is only 80 meters from the village school. Five of its 55 students are from my household. How could I let them go there?” said the man.
“I won’t let my grandchildren go to school,” agreed another, female resident. “I will immediately get them out. If there is no school, there is also no village.”
“I didn’t go to the meeting [with Pashinyan,] but everyone who did came away from it very unhappy and disappointed,” said another woman.
The territorial concessions planned by Pashinyan have been strongly condemned by the Armenian opposition. Opposition leaders say they would not only have serious consequences for the security of the affected communities but also the country as a whole.
“Fulfilling Azerbaijan’s incessant demands by continuously threatening our people with war will not only not prevent Azerbaijan from making new demands but will also create fertile ground for new aggressive actions by the latter,” the main opposition Hayastan alliance said in a statement released on Tuesday. It said that Pashinyan will commit a “grave crime against the state” if he goes ahead with his plans.
The ruined villages claimed by Baku are strategically located along one of the two main Armenian highways leading to Georgia as well as the pipeline supplying Russian natural gas to Armenia via Georgia. Pashinyan said on March 12 that the local sections of that infrastructure must be rerouted “so that they pass through Armenia’s de jure territory.”
Seyran Ohanian, a former defense minister leading Hayastan’s parliamentary group, countered that building such bypasses would be very difficult and time-consuming.
Ohanian said the handover of the border areas would also breach the integrity of the Armenian army’s border defense fortifications in Tavush reinforced over the last three decades. Azerbaijani troops would pose a more serious security threat to this and another northern Armenian province, Lori, he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Pashinyan had already ordered unilateral Armenian troop withdrawals from contested border areas in the southeastern Syunik province in the wake of the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. That did not stop Azerbaijani forces from attacking Syunik and making territorial gains there in 2021 and 2022.
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