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Almost fifteen years after calling a truce between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) is planning to implement a project aimed at finding out what happened to thousands of missing people.

According to ICRC data, the total number of people missing in the zone of the Karabakh conflict (both Azeri and Armenians) is from 4-5,000, the overwhelming majority of whom are servicemen.

James Reynolds, head of IRCR delegation in Armenia, says that considering the time factor here, most of them are probably dead by now.

“The project will enable us to draw a more precise and wide picture, first of all, concerning the list of the missing about which [the list] we already have certain information; it’ll also help us to obtain new information,” Reynolds told ArmeniaNow.

In 2008, IRCR signed a framework agreement with state commissions on the issues of Armenia’s, Azerbaijan’s and Nagorno Karabakh’s war prisoners, hostages and the missing. The agreement is envisaged to regulate the search process of people’s fates who went missing during the conflict years.

According to that agreement, all records- among which there are photos, description of the physical appearance of the missing, description of what s/he was wearing or things s/he had right before going missing- will be handed to the authorities for further assistance in the identification process.

Larisa Alaverdyan, RA National Assembly deputy, member of Heritage faction, who has been involved on an expert level in the issues of hostages, war prisoners and the missing for many years, welcomes the launch of the project, although she says that it should have started much earlier.

“I am convinced that before Azerbaijan has been hindering that process. The Armenian side has offered to start the process many times. For example, in 2004, at an international conference in Geneva devoted to the issue of the missing, I proposed signing an agreement between Armenian and Azerbaijan at the end of the conference, on the beginning of the search process of the missing. However, the representative of Azerbaijan declared that he did not have such authority. During the following years we never received an adequate reaction from Baku,” says Alaverdyan, who became Armenia’s first Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) in late February of 2004.

According to the list by Fund “Against Violation of Law” NGO (Alaverdyan was the Executive Director), about 1,000 Armenians are missing.

“The difference in the numbers of the missing Armenians and Azeries first of all reflects the total correlation of forces involved in the hostilities,” says Alaverdyan. “Besides that, there are many evidences proving that after a certain battle was over Armenian field commanders turned to the Azeris asking to take the bodies off the battlefield in accordance with the Geneva convention. However, Azeri commanders did not do that. Instead they would declare the dead soldiers and officers as missing and captive, later (I can say even until now) using them for political speculation.”

Alaverdyan thinks that as a result of such approach there are many nameless places of mass burial and that is why an identification process of the buried remnants “isn’t in Azerbaijan’s best interest.”

Data collection and recording within the project framework has already started. As Reynolds says, the work is hard from a psychological point of view, since ICRC representatives are dealing with people who, during many years, have not received any news about their family members. They are forced to stir up those people’s memories making them mentally return to the long gone days over and over again.

An appeal from a missing person’s family member served as a ground to ICRC for starting the search. Even if a corresponding state commission informs about an episode in the course of which people went missing, the incident is not recorded and a case isn’t filed without an appropriate conversation with family members.

“Period of limitation is not essential to us. I can say that until now we come across cases of searching people who have been missing since the World War II, Vietnam war, etc. We hope that during our project in the process of interviews with relatives new details can come up about already registered cases,” Reynolds says.

As for exhumation of remnants buried in the conflict zone- which is one of the search mechanisms- Reynolds says the process hasn’t started yet.

“We have to take into account that on top of all other factors, exhumation is difficult in technical terms as well. There are also issues of ethical and legal character, for example in regard of digging mass graves or exhumation of citizens of other countries, which will be inevitable in our case.”

By Marina Grigoryan

ArmeniaNow reporter

http://www.armenianow.com/?action=viewArticle&IID=1217&CID=3352&AID=3492&lng=eng