Armenia should actively raise issue of Armenian refugees in international arena

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.