ARMENIA SHOULD ACTIVELY RAISE ISSUE OF ARMENIAN REFUGEES IN INTERNATIONAL ARENA
PanARMENIAN.Net
15.01.2010 15:51 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ For 20 years the rights of Armenian refugees from
Azerbaijan have been violated. They have not received compensation,
and it is still not clear, can they ever return to former places
of residence, Larisa Alaverdyan , the former ombudsman of Armenia,
RA NA deputy, told a round table "Ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan:
Baku, 1990" in Yerevan.
The issue of Armenian refugees of eastern Transcaucasia was wiped out
from the Nagorno Karabakh negotiations. The interests of the Armenians
of the region are not properly represented either diplomatically or
in the information field," the Armenian MP said. Larisa Alaverdian
drew attention to the fact that the Armenians were not a minority in
Azerbaijan, and were founders of Soviet Azerbaijan.
"It turns out that the Armenians were deprived of their homeland,
and not just places of residence, as some wish to present," the
parliamentarian said. According to Alaverdyan, the Armenian side
should be more active in international bodies and raise the issue of
ethnic cleansings in Azerbaijan by all means.
On January 13, 1990, the Azerbaijani authorities instigated the
Armenian pogroms of Baku. Some 400 Armenians were killed and 200
thousand were exiled in the period of January 13-19. The exact number
of those killed was never determined, as no investigation was carried
out into the crimes.
On the above-mentioned date, a crowd numbering 50 thousand people
divided into groups and started "cleaning" the city of Armenians. On
January 17, the European Parliament called on EU Council of Foreign
Ministers and European Council to protect Armenians and render
assistance to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. On January 18, a group of
U.S. Senators sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev to express concerns
over the violence against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan and
called for unification of Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia.