Azernews.Az

By Vafa Ismayilova

Armenia has illegally resettled 76 families to Azerbaijani territories, which are temporarily in the Russian peacekeepers’ responsibility zone, the Armenian media have reported.

Quoting officials of the fake self-proclaimed regime in Karabakh, created by Yerevan on Azerbaijan’s formerly occupied lands, the local media said that these are people who "first settled in Karabakh".

In June 2021, eight families, or 39 people, arrived in these territories for permanent residence, the resettlement of another 10 families continues. In total, the point is about 376 illegal migrants, the separatists said.

There has been no official reaction from Baku on this issue.

Azerbaijan faced a humanitarian crisis during the war in the early 1990s, in which 30,000 of its citizens were killed, while one million others were forcibly displaced from their homeland.

During the nearly three-decade occupation, Armenia attempted to change the demographics of the occupied territories by bringing in ethnic Armenians from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, even though unlawful.

In particular, Armenia's artificial resettlement policies following the explosion in Beirut on August 4, 2020, and the Syrian War in 2009, aimed to change the demographics of Nagorno-Karabakh in violation of international law, the Geneva Convention, and various international agreements.

Last September, President Ilham Aliyev said that Armenia will be held accountable for its policy of illegal settlement in the occupied territories.

“Several Lebanese-Armenian families have recently been resettled to Nagorno-Karabakh, including Shusha, an ancient city in Azerbaijan. It amounts to a war crime and contravenes the Geneva Convention. Armenia will be held accountable for this crime. It is another provocation against us. Settlement in the occupied territories is a crime, and Armenia has pursued this policy for many years. The fact is that the country's population is shrinking due to Armenia's difficult economic, political, and social situation. Armenia is experiencing a demographic crisis and does not have the human resources to deploy its people in the occupied territories,” Aliyev said.

Thanks to satellite imagery provided by Azercosmos, Azerbaijan’s satellite operator, Baku has been able to track the expansion of new settlements in occupied regions.

On September 14, 2020, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry sent a letter of protest to OSCE Minsk Group, the international institution tasked with the mediation of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, on this occasion.

The Minsk Group fact-finding missions reported evidence of new settlements on the occupied territories in 2005 and 2010.

In 2005, the Minsk Group co-chairs warned against the potential repercussions of this process and said that it seriously complicates the peace process.

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan escalated on September 27, 2020, when Armenian armed forces deployed in the occupied Azerbaijani lands made military provocations against Azerbaijani civilian settlements and military positions. Armenia's offensive prompted immediate Azerbaijan’s counter-attack measures.

In November 2020, about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers were deployed in the Nagorno-Karabakh region under the Moscow-brokered cease-fire deal that brought an end to six weeks of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s. The deal stipulated the return of Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the peace deal, Azerbaijan liberated 300 villages, settlements, city centres, and historic Shusha city that had been under Armenian occupation for about 30 years.

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