Problem of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan requires political solution – ex foreign minister of Karabakh

“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--