If the Russians wanted, the road would be opened; we will reach our homes,” such a point of view was expressed at the meeting with Kimmo Kiljunen and Boriana Åberg, co-rapporteurs responsible for monitoring the implementation of Armenia’s obligations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in Goris, Artsakh residents who temporarily sheltered in hotels due to the closure of the Berdzor road for about three months. On February 18, PACE co-reporters were in the Syunik region on a fact-finding mission.
They were accompanied by the Vice President of the National Assembly, Ruben Rubinyan, and the Deputy of the “Civil Contract” faction, Arusyak Julhakyan. Together with Syunik Marz Governor Robert Ghukasyan and Goris Community Leader Arush Arushanyan, they first met with Artsakh residents, and then visited Berdzor ensuring the road leading to Artsakh was closed. According to 27-year-old Sasun, he knows well all the roads leading to Artsakh, and if he were alone, he would have reached home. “I am with my wife and child; my other child is in Stepanakert.
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The Red Cross says: We will take you to Artshakh, but you will have to send the passports to Baku, they will record the data, and then they will decide whether they will allow them to be transported. What does my personal information have to do with Baku?” says Sasun. Co-reporter Kimmo Kiljunen wondered what the people of Artsakh think.
Can they live side by side with Azerbaijanis or with the status of an autonomous region? Elderly citizens of Artsakh who participated in the meeting said they lived in fear even during the Soviet Union. “We took the children to school, then brought them back; we were always careful. And although the international language was Russian in those years, we spoke Azerbaijani,” they said.
The people of Artsakh were also against the status of an autonomous marz. “They are Muslims; if they teach their children at school that Armenians are their enemies, Armenians need to be slaughtered, they desecrate graves and spread all this on the Internet, how can we live with them?” says Alina, a mother of three children.
“Azerbaijani’s goal is to take us out of Artsakh, but we will not leave. Okay, let the blockade last a year. We have seen worse days than that. We will endure,” the people of Artsakh told the PACE delegates and announced that they would not stay in Armenia and wanted to reach their home a few minutes earlier.
Armen DAVTYAN
