IN YEREVAN – Children are believed to be among those killed in the remote enclave of Azerbaijan that was the scene of a military offensive last month, as groups begin to collect evidence of possible war crimes.
Armenian organisations have started documenting the latest war crimes allegedly committed by Azerbaijan’s troops against former citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh.
On 20 September, a 30-year dream of independence for the autonomous mountain enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan, came to a spectacular and brutal end when officials in the capital of Stepanakert surrendered after a lightning attack by the regime.
On Sunday, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev raised his nation’s flag over the capital in a ceremony reaffirming its control of the disputed region.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the self-declared Republic of Artsakh, have since poured into Armenia, many among them claiming to have been victims of abuses by Azeri forces.
“Within just the first 24 hours we had documented 18 cases of civilian murder,” said Arman Tatoyan, a former Armenian human rights ombudsman and founder of the Arman Tatoyan Foundation, which works to gather evidence of war crimes committed against ethnic Armenians.
“There are instances of several members of a single family being killed – in one such case, two children who were just ten and eight years old,” he said.
Efforts to gather hard evidence of atrocities has been complicated by the speed at which Nagorno-Karabakh refugees, afraid of remaining close to the border with Azerbaijan, have scattered deeper into Armenia since first crossing last week.
With an Azeri blockade having suspended the flow of desperately needed supplies into the region for 10 months before the evacuation, the dire humanitarian situation has also meant state focus is presently on addressing immediate needs, such as food, shelter and medicine.
“The primary challenge is these people have extremely pressing humanitarian issues,” said Mr Tatoyan. “In many cases their greatest concern is simply finding family members from whom they’ve been separated.
Refugees from Azerbaijan’s controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh rest at a sports complex set up as a temporary shelter in the Armenian city of Artashat (Photo by Karen Minasyan/AFP) A displaced family from Nagorno-Karabakh sitting on a bed in a temporary shelter in Artashat, southeast of Yerevan, Armenia (Photo: Diego Herrera Carcedo/Getty Images)
“Interviews have been difficult because people are under immense stress. Of course the focus is on aid, but it’s also incredibly important to collect evidence because in a dynamic situation like this, information is very precious and once lost may never be found again.”
While formal documentation may face significant logistical challenges, allegations of atrocities are not hard to find among the newly arrived refugee population.
Alik Chilingaryan, 63, is staying at a temporary shelter in Goris, the first point of call for many refugees who’ve fled over the past week. Once able-bodied, he is now confined to a wheelchair after he claims Azeri soldiers targeted his village.
“We were under fire from drones, we were not prepared for anything like it. Four people died,” he said. “We were shot at by artillery. I was in my yard outside, and a rocket hit about 30 metres away from me. There was an explosion, and the wave threw me 15 metres with the debris piercing my legs.”
Artur Petrossian, 43, also claims his village was similarly a target of airstrikes, with missiles raining down on homes and even a school building. “I am now twice a refugee by Azerbaijan,” he said. “Once because of the 1990 pogrom in Baku [Azerbaijan’s capital], and now because of this latest attack.”
David Mashuryan, director at Goris Medical Clinic, said the hospital had admitted hundreds of cases of civilians injured by shrapnel over the past few days, a great many of which have required amputation.
“A lot of these people were in really very serious condition when they arrived,” he said. “After providing them with first aid, we often had to co-ordinate with the Ministry of Health to arrange their onward transport to medical facilities in [the Armenian capital of] Yerevan.”
After Azerbaijan’s attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s parliament voted yesterday to ratify the Rome Statute, the first step toward joining the International Criminal Court and opening the way for these alleged atrocities to be investigated and possibly prosecuted in the Hague at some point in future.