"In the summer of 1992, as a result of Azerbaijani attacks, more than 20,000 Armenians of the Shahumyan region of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic were forced to flee their homes, losing everything, facing many problems related to poverty, unemployment and integration, and facing widespread violations of their rights," the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic Gegham Stepanyan said in a statement on the occasion of the the 29th anniversary of the Azeri occupation of the region.
"The actions taken against the Armenians of the Shahumyan region were a real example of ethnic cleansing, for which the Azerbaijani authorities were not held accountable," Stepanyan said.
The Ombudsman recalls the words of the Azeri leader saying: "If there is at least one Armenian left in Karabakh by October 1992, the people of Azerbaijan can hang me in the central square of Baku."
"The expulsion of the Armenian population from the region on the basis of nationality, religion and ethnicity was not clearly assessed by the international community, and the issue of restoring their violated rights was not on the agenda of negotiations. Many of the people who lost their homes were not recognized as refugees or vulnerable by the relevant international organizations and did not receive support from the international community. While the Azeri refugees were receiving huge international support, the Armenians were deprived of it," the statement said, adding even today, when in the fall of 2020, due to the Azeri aggression against the people of Artsakh, 40,000 Artsakh residents were left homeless, international organizations show indifference by conditioning their behavior with the status of Artsakh.
"This is a reprehensible indifference, does not follow from the principle of universality of human rights protection. The international community must express a clear position, take steps to provide legal and political assessments of the crimes committed against the people of Artsakh, and carry out further work on socio-economic reparation," the Ombudsman concluded.