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  • New Efforts To Find Karabakh Missing

    NEW EFFORTS TO FIND KARABAKH MISSING
    By Ashot Beglarian in Stepanakert

    Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
    Sept 28 2006

    Council of Europe joins in search for those who disappeared during
    the Karabakh war.

    Efforts to establish the fate of thousands of people still listed as
    missing-in-action in the 1991-4 Nagorny Karabakh conflict have been
    given a much-needed boost.

    The new impetus came from a visit to the region last week by Dutch
    senator Leo Platvoet, rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the
    Council of Europe, or PACE, on the issue. He visited Nagorny Karabakh
    itself as well as Yerevan and Baku and Tbilisi, where he is engaged
    in similar work with regard to the Abkhazia conflict.

    In Karabakh, Platvoet said he was planning to present a report on
    missing-in-action at the winter session of PACE, "In writing the
    report we will focus our attention only on the humanitarian aspect
    of the problem."

    He met officials from the de facto Karabakh government, who promised
    support. "We hold the opinion that some issues, including the issue
    of missing-in-action can be resolved before the signing of a peace
    agreement," said deputy foreign minister Masis Mailian.

    Platvoet was appointed to his position by the parliamentary assembly
    last December. Collaboration on the issue has decreased in the last
    few years, although the tri-partite International Working Group -
    led by Bernhard Clasen of Germany, Russia's Svetlana Gannushkina and
    Paata Zakareishvili of Georgia - continues to investigate the problem.

    Albert Voskanian, who is coordinator in Karabakh of the International
    Working Group, welcomed the parliamentary assembly's new-found interest
    in the issue.

    "Work on this problem at such a high level can extend the possibilities
    of looking for missing- in-action, systematise the efforts of people
    who work on this problem to improve the technology of identification
    of remains that have been found," said Voskanian.

    "Moreover PACE can compel the parties to cooperate on this humanitarian
    issue and develop concrete mechanisms for all sides in the conflict
    to work together."

    Several thousand people are still listed as missing, more than 12
    years after the ceasefire that halted the Nagorny Karabakh war in
    1994. Many of them are believed to be dead and most of the work on
    the issue concentrates on checking lists, searching for burial sites
    and working on identifying remains.

    Platvoet told journalists he was hopeful that the issue could be
    de-politicised and methods elaborated by the Red Cross to search
    lists and check the remains of the dead could be deployed successfully.

    However, many relatives of those who have disappeared complain that
    very little has actually been done to trace their missing loved ones.

    "What can we expect from them?" said 80-year-old Garasim, whose son
    went missing 14 years ago during the war. "Nothing. How many years
    have I been crossing the thresholds of all possible offices and
    without result."

    Vera Grigorian, head of the Union of Relatives of Warriors Missing
    in Action in the Nagorny Karabakh Republic, says that journalists
    should be more active in covering the problem.

    "We have to use all levers and any possibilities to discover the fates
    of people, to find and extract our compatriots from captivity," she
    said. "But unfortunately I can feel there is an information vacuum
    in this sphere."

    There are recurring reports on both sides of missing soldiers
    apparently still being held in captivity but these are almost never
    confirmed as true.

    "The search for missing-in-action is an exclusively humanitarian,
    complex and delicate problem," said Karen Ohanjanian of the human
    rights organisation Helsinki Initiative-92. "It is very important to
    check all rumours very scrupulously and without emotion, we must not
    agitate the wounded souls of the relatives of the missing."

    Voskanian says that all Azerbaijani prisoners-of-war were returned
    home in the two years that followed the 1994 ceasefire. "Personally,
    in collaboration with the Azerbaijani state commission of that time,
    several hundred captives, dozens of corpses and remains were exchanged
    or handed over to the Azerbaijani side."

    The Red Cross has lists of the disappeared, numbering 4,132 people.

    Karabakh Armenians argue that many of the latter were Azerbaijani
    deserters or that they are now migrants in Russia.

    In July this year, an international conference was held in Karabakh
    to come up with new initiatives on locating the missing, whether
    living or dead. Afterwards, Karen Ohanjanian, one of the organisers,
    said, "The parliaments of the region ought to adopt legislation on
    missing-in-action to force the state to begin serious work on solving
    this problem."

    Arzu Abdullayeva, coordinator of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in
    Azerbaijan, said, "We have developed a good working relationship
    with Mr Platvoet, whom we met in Holland. He is interested in a
    whole range of issues in the sphere of missing-in-action and that is
    encouraging. On the other hand, we are working to combine the efforts
    of the relatives of the missing so they can help people from both
    sides. We have to understand both the positions and the desires of
    each other to come to an agreement that suits both sides."

    Ashot Beglarian is a freelance journalist and IWPR contributor in
    Stepanakert, Nagorny Karabakh.
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