Azernews.Az

THE HAGUE – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is due to review a lawsuit on September 15 filed by a group of Azerbaijanis displaced during the armed conflict with Armenia in the early 1990s, the ECHR website said.

The six applicants, who filed the lawsuit, entitled "Chiragov and Others v. Armenia", state that they are Azerbaijani Kurds who lived in the district of Lachin, in Azerbaijan, which forms a corridor less than 10 kilometers wide between Nagorno Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region under Armenian occupation, with Armenia’s territory. All but one of the plaintiffs now live in the capital Baku.

Due to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the applicants were forced to flee on May 17, 1992. They have not been able to return to their homes and properties ever since because of Armenian occupation.

The applicants complain in particular about the loss of their properties in Lachin, as well as various other possessions such as cars, livestock and handmade carpets. They also complain that there is no prospect for them in the foreseeable future to be able to use, sell, bequeath, mortgage or develop their property as the Armenian government continues to refuse to allow them to return to Lachin. Nor have the Armenian authorities made any attempt to compensate them for their losses or to provide a remedy to persons displaced from the occupied territories. They rely on articles of the relevant convention on the protection of property and the right to respect for private and family life, and the right to an effective remedy, according to the ECHR website.

Finally, the applicants say that if they had been ethnic Armenian and Christian, they would not have been forcibly displaced from their homes by the Armenian-backed Karabakh forces and that their property rights would have been recognized and their complaints investigated.

The application was lodged with the ECHR on April 6, 2005. The case is to be heard in the court’s Grand Chamber.

Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war over the mountainous region of Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenia has been occupying over 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory since then. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but the OSCE-brokered peace talks have been fruitless so far.