NEW EFFORTS TO FIND KARABAKH MISSING
By Ashot Beglarian in Stepanakert
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
Sept 28 2006
Council of Europe joins in search for those who disappeared during
the Karabakh war.
Efforts to establish the fate of thousands of people still listed as
missing-in-action in the 1991-4 Nagorny Karabakh conflict have been
given a much-needed boost.
The new impetus came from a visit to the region last week by Dutch
senator Leo Platvoet, rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe, or PACE, on the issue. He visited Nagorny Karabakh
itself as well as Yerevan and Baku and Tbilisi, where he is engaged
in similar work with regard to the Abkhazia conflict.
In Karabakh, Platvoet said he was planning to present a report on
missing-in-action at the winter session of PACE, "In writing the
report we will focus our attention only on the humanitarian aspect
of the problem."
He met officials from the de facto Karabakh government, who promised
support. "We hold the opinion that some issues, including the issue
of missing-in-action can be resolved before the signing of a peace
agreement," said deputy foreign minister Masis Mailian.
Platvoet was appointed to his position by the parliamentary assembly
last December. Collaboration on the issue has decreased in the last
few years, although the tri-partite International Working Group –
led by Bernhard Clasen of Germany, Russia’s Svetlana Gannushkina and
Paata Zakareishvili of Georgia – continues to investigate the problem.
Albert Voskanian, who is coordinator in Karabakh of the International
Working Group, welcomed the parliamentary assembly’s new-found interest
in the issue.
"Work on this problem at such a high level can extend the possibilities
of looking for missing- in-action, systematise the efforts of people
who work on this problem to improve the technology of identification
of remains that have been found," said Voskanian.
"Moreover PACE can compel the parties to cooperate on this humanitarian
issue and develop concrete mechanisms for all sides in the conflict
to work together."
Several thousand people are still listed as missing, more than 12
years after the ceasefire that halted the Nagorny Karabakh war in
1994. Many of them are believed to be dead and most of the work on
the issue concentrates on checking lists, searching for burial sites
and working on identifying remains.
Platvoet told journalists he was hopeful that the issue could be
de-politicised and methods elaborated by the Red Cross to search
lists and check the remains of the dead could be deployed successfully.
However, many relatives of those who have disappeared complain that
very little has actually been done to trace their missing loved ones.
"What can we expect from them?" said 80-year-old Garasim, whose son
went missing 14 years ago during the war. "Nothing. How many years
have I been crossing the thresholds of all possible offices and
without result."
Vera Grigorian, head of the Union of Relatives of Warriors Missing
in Action in the Nagorny Karabakh Republic, says that journalists
should be more active in covering the problem.
"We have to use all levers and any possibilities to discover the fates
of people, to find and extract our compatriots from captivity," she
said. "But unfortunately I can feel there is an information vacuum
in this sphere."
There are recurring reports on both sides of missing soldiers
apparently still being held in captivity but these are almost never
confirmed as true.
"The search for missing-in-action is an exclusively humanitarian,
complex and delicate problem," said Karen Ohanjanian of the human
rights organisation Helsinki Initiative-92. "It is very important to
check all rumours very scrupulously and without emotion, we must not
agitate the wounded souls of the relatives of the missing."
Voskanian says that all Azerbaijani prisoners-of-war were returned
home in the two years that followed the 1994 ceasefire. "Personally,
in collaboration with the Azerbaijani state commission of that time,
several hundred captives, dozens of corpses and remains were exchanged
or handed over to the Azerbaijani side."
The Red Cross has lists of the disappeared, numbering 4,132 people.
Karabakh Armenians argue that many of the latter were Azerbaijani
deserters or that they are now migrants in Russia.
In July this year, an international conference was held in Karabakh
to come up with new initiatives on locating the missing, whether
living or dead. Afterwards, Karen Ohanjanian, one of the organisers,
said, "The parliaments of the region ought to adopt legislation on
missing-in-action to force the state to begin serious work on solving
this problem."
Arzu Abdullayeva, coordinator of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in
Azerbaijan, said, "We have developed a good working relationship
with Mr Platvoet, whom we met in Holland. He is interested in a
whole range of issues in the sphere of missing-in-action and that is
encouraging. On the other hand, we are working to combine the efforts
of the relatives of the missing so they can help people from both
sides. We have to understand both the positions and the desires of
each other to come to an agreement that suits both sides."
Ashot Beglarian is a freelance journalist and IWPR contributor in
Stepanakert, Nagorny Karabakh.