Nalbandian exaggerated the number of refugees from Azerbaijan by 12 times. According to Regnum, on July 13, Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian received newly appointed head of the UN Armenian office on refugees Damtew Dessalin during the meeting with whom the foreign minister said that the Armenian office started its work to provide assistance to “about 400,000 refugees deported from Azerbaijan”.
Nalbandian said that “the Armenian government considers it a top priority to provide flats to the families temporarily residing in hostels after being forced away from Azerbaijan”.
Commenting on this states, AzerTaj’s political reviewer Vugar Seyidov noted that probably the Armenian minister saw “400,000 Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan” “living in Yerevan hostels”.
According to Seyidov, this number of Armenians has never left Azerbaijan.
“There were 358,000 Armenian ethnic outside the former NKAO whose population made up 139,000 Armenians and 45,000 Azerbaijanis by the start of the conflict. Some 320,000 Armenians (about 40,000, except for Nagorno Karabakh Armenians stayed) left Azerbaijan in 1988-1994, including 200,000 initially found refuge in Armenian SSR and the rest in other former USSR republics. Later a greater part of Armenians from Azerbaijan failed to integrate with Armenia, left South Caucasus and found refugee in the CIS countries, primarily, Russia.
With the collapse of the USSR and the opening of borders a great many of former Armenian refugees settled in the United States, Canada and Europe. In the result of these migration processes, the number of Armenian refugees in Armenia continued to grow and currently there are less than 35,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan, mostly elderly persons, according to UNHCR and Armenian experts. With the acceptance of the Armenian citizenship and naturalization in this country, under article 1-C-3 of the Geneva Convention of 1051 lost the status of refugees and are no longer the UNHCR target. But even notwithstanding this Nalbandian exaggerated the number of refugees from Azerbaijan by 12 times!
The element of the state propaganda is also the myth about “hostels” and “lack of houses” for Armenian refugees. 207,500 refugees including 186,000 Azerbaijanis, 18,000 Muslim Kurds and 3,500 Russians left Armenia in the years of conflict in 1988-1990. 216 Azerbaijanis (we even have the list of names) were killed during pogroms while the number of the wounded is unclear. Later about 2,000 Russians left Armenia for North Caucasus including Krasnodar and Stavropol, as well as Rostov. A greater part of Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia were engaged in agricultural sector and when leaving Armenia they left hundreds of villages with farms, cattle, lands, pastures and good houses taking almost nothing with them (to compare, most Armenians from Azerbaijan managed to sell or exchange their flats and take their property). If today 35,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan live in hostels in Armenia, who has got the movable and immovable property of Azerbaijanis, Russians and Muslim Kurds?
It is doubtful that Azerbaijani villages in Armenia has the same fate with the settlements in the occupied lands, that were destroyed into bricks, windows and the sewerage pipes dug from underground. Does someone live in those villages now or they are kept empty? Each of 35,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan now living in Armenia accounts for a separate house that belonged to Azerbaijanis and Muslim Kurds before they were forced to flee their lands. In these conditions no Armenians leaving Azerbaijan will be left without a house!
Meanwhile, Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian should better learn to count and then he will probably not be dreaming of 400,000 homeless refugees from Azerbaijan.
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