Armenia unaware of number of people missing in Karabakh conflict - Azerbaijani official
By Nigar Orujova
Azerbaijan's State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons registered 4,033 people as missing, including 46 children, 255 women, and 353 elderly, as of July 1, head of the working group of the State Commission Firudin Sadigov said.
The Commission is working jointly with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) .
According to Sadigov, there are specific facts about 877 people, including 22 children, 99 women and 133 elderly, that they were captured and live in the occupied territories, but Armenia does not recognize the fact.
Since the beginning of the conflict, 1,402 have been released from Armenian captivity.
"Currently, one Azerbaijani hostage registered by the International Committee of the Red Cross is held in Yerevan. Azerbaijani soldier Farajev Firuz Mirza oglu who was born in 1992 in Baku was taken hostage by Armenian armed forces on July 26, 2012," Sadigov said.
Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict which emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against the neighboring country. The two South Caucasus countries fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a precarious cease-fire in 1994.
Sadigov also said Azerbaijan keeps one Armenian family of five persons. The head of the family Yeghishe Gevorgyan on January 10, 2010, together with his wife and three minor children, left the territory of Armenia, crossed the Azerbaijani border and refuses to return to his home country.
Sadigov said further, "We are trying to do our best to find the missing people and see the positive results of this. However, most of the missing disappeared in the territories occupied by Armenia, so we are limited in their search."
As a result of investigations conducted in 2012 by the Commission's working group, the fate of 38 registered missing persons was clarified. Five of these people remained alive after taking part in military operations, while five others were killed, their bodies were identified and buried; the names of 26 persons were repeated in the list and two others went missing outside the conflict zone.
553 persons have been killed in Armenian captivity or have died for other reasons (torture, diseases), including 104 women.
Armenia marked the day of the disappeared people on June 29.
"It is surprising that relevant circles in Armenia, who still do not know or are simply not interested in finding out the exact number of Armenians who went missing during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, now mark 'the day of the disappeared'," Sadigov said.
According to him, such activities are meant for public opinion and their desire is to shape an opinion of ordinary Armenians that "we are looking for the missing".
Thus, if ones refers to the information circulated in Armenian media over the past few years, one can come across upon a variety of figures released by Armenian officials about the number of missing Armenians, he said.
"For example, they indicate that in 2011 the number of missing Armenians in total amounted to more than 200 people, then 200 across Armenia, more than 700 from Karabakh; in 2012, there were 407 missing people in Armenia, and 449 in Karabakh. Moreover, at the "event" [the day of the disappeared], more ridiculous opinions were made. One report says that the number of missing Armenians in Armenia is 400 and in total exceeds 1,000 people, while another report says that the number of missing Armenians in the Karabakh war was 950, 400 of whom are military men, while others are civilians of the Agderi (Mardakert) region," Sadigov said, adding that this means that in general, there is no single credible theory.
"It appears that during the conflict civilians of only one region went missing. Actually, it's not surprising, because the working group of the state commission of Armenia was launched in summer 2006, in other words, some 18 years after the conflict erupted. This shows that in fact this humanitarian problem, which emerged as a result of the Armenian aggression, does not bother them, and these figures are shown every morning just to create visibility and to be constantly on the agenda."
Sadigov said that in January 2004, the ICRC submitted a list called "Alphabetical list of civilians and military personnel of Armenian descent gone missing as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict" to the State Commission. The Azerbaijani side took the measures required to find the people included in that list.
"This list cites the names of 414 Armenians. During a scrutiny carried out by the State Commission, it was ascertained that 23 of the 414 went missing in Armenia, while two -- on the territory of Georgia, and in fact they have no bearing on the conflict. Moreover, 211 out of the 414 people are Armenians who lived in the territory of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic which means that they are Azerbaijani citizens, while 197 are citizens of Armenia, 3 are citizens of Georgia, 2 are citizens of Russia, and one person is a citizen of Iran," Sadigov said.
Most of the people from both sides went missing in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan during the conflict. Since these areas are controlled by the Armenian military, the Armenians can conduct searches there easier. Interestingly, Armenians who provide inaccurate and divergent figures on the number of the missing persons, also differently call a day dedicated to them, calling it "the dead and missing in the Karabakh war" in one instance and "military missing persons" in another, Sadigov said.
According to Sadigov, ICRC in 2001 provided a list of 50 Azerbaijanis held in Armenian captivity. The bodies of 17 people were returned to their homeland, while the fate of 33 Azerbaijanis is unknown, despite the fact that the Red Cross staff have seen them.
"Where are these 33 Azerbaijanis, and for what purpose are the Armenians hiding information about their further fate? The Armenian authorities have already resorted to a variety of options to conceal these facts. They even make ridiculous claims that the Armenians who left the house and did not return had been captured by Azerbaijan," Sadigov said.
Armenian armed forces occupy over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. Peace talks brokered by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs the United States, Russia and France have been largely fruitless so far. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani lands.