The Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan reflected on another example of the loss of territories as a result of disregarding the rights of village residents and their normal life requirements during border disputes.
The Ombudsman reminds that as a result of the inconsistency of the policies by Soviet Armenia, the entire disputed territory of Shinikh-Ayrum region (11.659 “desyatinas”) was declared as a part of the Azerbaijani Kazakh Uyezd, and the disputed territory of the forest (4.000 “desyatinas”) – as a part Dilijan in the Armenian SSR. Meanwhile, under the decision of April 28, 1923 of the commission on land dispute resolution of uyezds within the Transcaucasian Central Executive Committee (CEC) from, a land with an area of 5000 “desyatinas” in the region of Shinikh-Ayrumi was handed over from Dilijan Uyezd to the Kazakh Uyezd.
"As a result of this unfortunate decision for Armenia and especially for the rural population, the village of Bashkend, a part of the Armenian SSR (later with an Armenian title – Artsvashen), appeared in the Kazakh Uyezd: it was decided to detach a section of a land (summer pasture) that would have territorially connected the village with Dilijan. Nevertheless, this was important precisely in terms of the rights of Armenian population of Bashkend.
Ultimately, during the session of the presidency of the Transcaucasian Central Executive Committee on February 18, 1929, it was decided to reaffirm the agreement of January 11, 1927, and to link Bashkend with Armenian SSR with a narrow land section.To execute that decision, 45 border signs were installed in forest areas of Shinikh-Ayrum during 1929," wrote Tatoyan.
According to the decision of the Central Executive Committee, it was planned to allocate a part of the lands of Shinikh-Ayrum region for the use the residents of Bashkend village. However, in 1929, the offer to provide at least 0.75 hectares of land per capita was rejected by the decision of the July 20 sitting of the presidency of the Executive Committee, citing scarcity of land.
Moreover, The Azeri authorities incited their sections of the population to write imaginary protests against the Armenian SSR, thus provoking more problems. Usually wedged in the territory of Armenia, the Azeri villages began to try to expand at the expense of the Armenian villages as usual.
"In the 1920s, Soviet Armenia lost territories and one of the reasons was that human rights and the rights of the peasants were not at the basis of the decisions, in that sense there was a lack of consistency of policies. It was not taken into consideration that the solution to any border dispute should be based on the degree to which the normal life of the border population is ensured. Of course, the Soviet leadership did not take that into consideration either," Tatoyan wrote.