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MediaLab.am talked with human rights defender Artur Sakunts, Chairman of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor about the developments of the past few days.

– Mr. Sakunts, during the 5-day hostilities, we witnessed violent acts by the Azerbaijani side: peaceful civilians were tortured and murdered, and a serviceman was beheaded. What steps should the Armenian side take to present these incidents to the international institutions?

Data on the incidents above should be collected and presented to relevant international institutions. It is essential to collect information on the fate and whereabouts of the missing persons. To this end, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the International Committee of the Red Cross should provide great support.

Very intensive and effective actions should be taken in terms of the issues of the missing persons and prisoners of war since their families should receive precise information about their whereabouts and return.

On the one hand, such actions should be taken and relevant work should be done jointly with the Azerbaijani side.

On the other hand, the issues related to those crimes should be documented; there is a relevant procedure, and such incidents should be presented in a proper way.

I do not pin any deep hopes on our Ministry of Foreign Affairs; however, such issues might be settled by the National Assembly, Ministry of Justice and the Agency on Prisoners of War and Missing Persons; there are also various international channels.

Firstly, families of the casualties can appeal the violations of their relative’s rights before international tribunals. In other words, here we face issues of legal nature, which entail a procedure for application to the ECtHR.

The other issues are civilian, which I highlight at this point. Regretfully, the current situation was brought about by inadequate contacts between the representatives of the conflicting societies. In the past 6 or 7 years, such contacts had broken off, and this is of course a factor causing a rather serious obstacle. I mean that now issues related to the support to the conflict victims and their families should be dealt with on the one hand, and on the other, the dialogue between the conflicting societies should be restored since the dialogue between the authorities actually fails and it is the society that primarily suffers from it, and therefore, channels for a dialogue should be created.

No matter how difficult it might be, such dialogue should be restored, since in the Azerbaijani society few but reasonable views have been voiced as well.

In this regard, the Minsk Group has quite a serious work to do. The other issue is dialogue at the political level, which seems to be promoted by the Minsk Group. Well before this escalation of the conflict, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs should have aimed to create a political situation that would neutralize the factors threatening the ceasefire. We saw no such actions; on the contrary, we saw that all the key foreign policy decisions were left to the Kremlin’s powers. In other words, the opportunity to take independent decision was limited by the political authorities and the political opposition supporting them. That is why we have to face the consequences of the inaction of the Armenian politicians and political forces.

– During the Russian Prime Minister’s visit to Armenia, it turned out that Armenia had not received armaments from Russia as provided by the contract. Also, in the past days we were informed by Serzh Sargsyan that our army uses arms dating back to the 1980s. Why do we face this situation?

–  The political authorities of the Republic of Armenia should have exerted very great efforts against any action promoting the arms race and first of all against Russia’s policy. Obviously, the financial resources are always limited to confront such arms race. In other words, I think that before getting involved in the arms race or obtaining relevant arms, a very great deal of work should be done to reduce the level of armaments, and no relevant actions are taken in the foreign policy of the RA. How could such actions be taken if every function was attributed to a state that itself promoted the arms race? Selling arms is a business for Russia, but as we can see, this business is done at the cost of human fates.

Here, there is an essentially noteworthy fact; not only did the provision of the loan of $ 200 million to Armenia fail, but also before the hostilities, a list of the arms to be provided to Armenia was published.

In other words, this time the Russian side obviously worked towards the attack of the Azerbaijani authorities in the area of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. On the one hand, it armed Azerbaijan, and on the other, informed the other side on its intention to arm it as well, and moreover, even published a list of the arms, but provided none. In other words, this seems to look like blackmail to some extent, i.e. look here, Azerbaijanis, these arms may appear in the hands of Armenians, and as long as they have not, you can take some steps.

This makes it obvious that Kremlin attempts to keep the both sides under control; currently it strengthens one of the sides and weakens the other. Of course, this game failed totally, since the planned situation, in fact, failed.

And here the surprising thing is that we learn about non-provision of the arms at the height of the hostilities.

This means that we, the RA nationals, trusted the authorities, including the NA forces that voted for the $200 million loan agreement. However, it turns out that no one inquired whether those arms reached their destination or not. This means that we, RA nationals, are unaware of whether our defense is on an adequate level or not. I think that keeping the public in such ignorance constitutes a crime.

– Meantime, nowadays, the public expresses criticism on how it appears that there are enough funds for the luxurious mansions and cars of the officials, but the army uses the arms dating back to the 1980s.

–  Yes, in this situation, as we go deep into the oligarchs’ personal property, mansions and cars worth millions of dollars and analyze the situation in the context of the arms dating back to the 1980s, I think it becomes more obvious to the public that corruption undermines the state not only in peacetime, but rather its consequences manifest themselves more than evidently during external threats. That is to say, corrupt institutions are mostly responsible for all of our casualties. Here, we have questions to the RA authorities and political forces.

Secondly, it is not too late to raise once again on the international arena the issue of the arms race still promoted by Russian Federation. Moreover, the infamous statement that they would sell weapons to the both sides as if to keep a balance merely comes to prove that the both sides are used as gladiators by making them fight against each other and enjoying it from aside or resolving some geopolitical issues.

– Why has this situation arisen, and what should be done to resolve it?

–  As long as we have no legitimate authorities and as long as this injustice and corruption exist, we cannot expect that we will be able to overcome our status of a gladiator. If we put up with this situation, we will have new casualties. In this context, I understand that we need to be consolidated, but attempts to pretend that consolidation is achieved under the auspices of the authorities constitute at least an insult to those consolidated. They have absolutely no trust in the authorities.

It is our policy that makes Russia show its current behavior to us. I think another important consideration is that the need for public support and volunteers today shows that the state institutions do not function.

Nowadays, we are not in the 1990s as the state was still at the stage of development.

Why should today any aid be sent to Artsakh? We have already paid as taxpayers for the settlement of the security issue, haven’t we? Why should nowadays oligarchs form queues to donate some money? Wherefrom did they get those 15 million or 20 million AMD? What kind of funds are these? This appears to be very similar to indulgence, which should not be accepted by the society in any way. Such “repentance” should be considered highly offensive by the very public at large, since the persons above attempt to return the plunder robbed from it as a compensation for the criminal conduct responsible for the blood of the casualties.

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