STRASBOURG, France (A.W.)—Earlier this month, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on two lawsuits filed by former Armenian and Azerbaijani residents of areas around Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh) who were displaced during the Karabagh War. At a public hearing in Strasbourg on June 16, ECHR Grand Chamber judgments were delivered in the cases of “Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan” and “Chiragov and Others v. Armenia.”
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Russia is the one that put Artsakh under Azeri rule and kept it there. Let it pay the claims the court has ordered.
I wonder if the European counrt would find turkey responsible for the very same issues? and if they did, would turkey turn back the clock? simple answer don’t you think – “NO”.
The ECHR judgment has failed to appreciate the circumstances that differential the cases involved: While Azeri Kurd refugees abandoned their homes under wartime circumstances, Armenian refugees were ejected in pogroms (in the midsts of massacres that threatened their very lives). In addition, the ECHR has failed to appreciate Azerbaijan’s legacy for perpetrating ethnic cleansing measures against Armenians in Karabakh, Nakhichevan and throughout Azerbaijan, that have been traceable in the current Azeri regime, as well as during Soviet times, and all the way back to the Armenian Genocide (1915 – 1923).
Azeri refugees, from Lachin, were displaced from a strategic location, essential to the Armenian strategy, during the Karabakh War (1988 – 1994, while Armenian refugees were oftentimes facing organized attacks by Azeri thugs, in non-strategic locations. The ECHR has taken the unproductive road of calling upon both countries to improve their human rights standards, in a similar way to that of the USA, when it calls upon both parties to observe the Karabakh ceasefire agreement, despite that Azerbaijan has repeatedly threatened to attack Armenia, as well as Karabakh. The ECHR has dropped the ball, and failed to educate itself properly for a very complex problem.
Well…at least they’re being consistent I guess.