PROBLEM OF ARMENIAN REFUGEES FROM AZERBAIJAN REQUIRES POLITICAL SOLUTION – EX FOREIGN MINISTER OF KARABAKH
YEREVAN, February 25. /ARKA/. Armenia’s authorities should solve the
problem of the Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan at a political level,
former foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Arman Melikyan
said on the air on Sputnik-Armenia radio channel.
“The refugees’ problem is not a consequence of Artsakh problem, but a
key to settlement. Hence, all the sides try to level it out and show
that no problems of Armenian refugees exist,” Melikyan said.
According to Melikyan, it is the Armenian authorities who should
take the first step and commit themselves to protection of the rights
of the Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan, but at a political level,
which implies certain legal steps, Novosti-Armenia reported.
Previous legal measures, particularly the granting of the Armenian
citizenship to all refugees retroactively, contained violations of
the law, he said. In fact, they obtained citizenship without knowing
it and without having agreed to it, he added.
Melikyan said he has been dealing with refugees’ problems for ten
years now and they demand material and moral compensation. These
demands were formulated and put across, but the authorities seem to
have agreed to skip the problem after the Madrid principles.
“Armenia’s authorities did their best to show the problem of Armenian
refugees from Azerbaijan is solved in Armenia through integration, and
it does not exist anymore. This, softly speaking, is a crime against
refugees who experienced the grossest violation of their rights,”
Melikyan said.
According to official information, some 32 Armenians were killed and
14,000 fled the town of Sumgait in Azerbaijan after the massacres, in
fact supported by the Azerbaijani authorities and with the connivance
of the Soviet government, in the period from February 6 to February
29, 1988. Killings of Armenians and ethnical cleansing continued later
in other Azerbaijani towns, particularly in Baku in January 1990. As
a result, some 500,000 Armenian refugees left Azerbaijan. -0–