People who were forcibly displaced from Artsakh once again held a protest near the French Embassy in Armenia. Levon Hayryan, the president of “For the sake of Hadrut” NGO, told reporters. “The main demand is that we want humanitarian asylum from France. They do not deny that the issue can be resolved. They say it’s a difficult issue; we are discussing it, wait for the answer.” When asked why they don’t want to live in Armenia, Hayryan answered: “We have been trying to find asylum in Armenia for three years. For three years, we have continuously applied for refugee status to build a settlement so that our community can live while preserving our culture. But our requests and demands were ignored in Armenia. Previously, we always held our gatherings at the RA government, and we demanded from them. But the appropriate behavior of the government pushed us to the embassies.”
Yesterday, at the session, the government adopted a decision on granting temporary status to persons forcibly displaced from Artsakh. Accordingly, Artsakh citizens can use the legal status of a refugee and apply for RA citizenship. When asked why they are not satisfied with this decision of the government, after all, they have been raising the issue of refugee status for three years, Levon Hayryan answered: “For three years in a row, we were told that we could not grant you refugee status because you are a citizen of the Republic of Armenia. Now, with one stroke of a pen yesterday, for some reason, they decided to grant refugee status to 120,000 people. They did not and will not keep us in Armenia. That project, which was presented yesterday, has such points. He says that based on your refugee status, they will give you some means of living, or if you don’t want it, you can apply, and they will give you Armenian citizenship. In other words, these people have been saying for three years that you are a citizen of Armenia, and now they are telling you to apply to get Armenian citizenship. I have a passport where it is written that “The holder of this passport is under the protection of the Republic of Armenia.”
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Now they have made a decision; they are telling me to bring the RA Passport, hand it over, and get RA citizenship. Can you understand what that means?’ Hayryan added: “This status was not given to us to solve our problems, but it is based on a political decision. We must first know what kind of decision this is and whose job it is. I understand that the main meaning of that decision is to eliminate and destroy the concept of Artsakh citizenship. The meaning of this decision is the page of my passport where it is written that I am registered in the Hadrut region of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic.
In other words, Samvel Shahramanyan’s decree to dissolve Artsakh was not enough, and now they want to abolish the citizenship of Artsakh internally. I must appeal to our compatriots that no one from Artsakh renounces the citizenship of the Republic. If the RA authorities have decided to keep us here as refugees, let them keep us. But I am afraid of something else: they force us to naturalize, and they also want to deprive me of my requirements. I had a house, and RA, as the guarantor of my property, should compensate. But they don’t want to give that either and I don’t see a future for this people here, in this state.”
Rosa HOVHANNISYAN
