HRCA Statement: forced migration in Azerbaijan

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 13:17:23 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: HRCA Statement: forced migration in Azerbaijan

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Eldar Zeynalov <[email protected]>

HRCA Statement: forced migration in Azerbaijan


The 5th meeting of CISCONF Steering Group in Geneva, 13-14 July 2000
 
STATEMENT
 
The Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan would like to attract your
attention to the situation of forced migration in Azerbaijan Republic.

Of course, the key problems are foreign occupation of Azerbaijani
territories and existance of hundreds thousands of refugees and
internally displaced persons.

The UN keep a distance from the problem of peace resolution of
conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. The monopoly of the OSCE Minsk Group to
mediate the peace negotiations did not promote their real progress. As
a result, the deported persons are still waiting for repatriation, and
without a job opportunities become the most marginalized group of
population. For the sake of ideas declared in 1948, UN must intervene
in this conflict to stop the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by
Armenian army and to secure the future of both Azeri and Armenian
communities of the region.

The USA still remains in the position to prohibit the direct
humanitarian and technical aid to only party of this conflict,
Azerbaijan. That deprives the flows of American humanitarian aid the
proper control of American and Azerbaijani government and provocate
the establishment of formally non-governmental bodies embezzling the
public funds. So, in the interests of refugees and American nation to
to abolish the discrimination section 907 of the U.S. Freedom Support
Act.

There is still a problem of practical sabotage of repatriation of
Meskhetian Turks by the Georgian government. The old obligations are
not implementing. The new obligations taken by Georgia before Council
of Europe in 1999 are a simple trick, a time-out for avoiding the real
progress of repatriation.

The economical situation in Azerbaijan is stable stagnating because of
war and painful transition to the market economy. According to the
unofficial sources, 1 Mln. to 1.5 Mln. Azerbaijani citizens left the
country and deal with the small business in other CIS countries.
Living as the labour migrants in Russia, they have no real protection
of both Russian and Azerbaijan governments and often are in the
situation of out of law being rubbered and even killed in the
situation of impunity. There are often the openly racist statements
about the "persons of Caucasian nationality" in Russian media, and the
government of Moscow city is still in the position to violate the
Russian Constitution by illegal acts about passport registration of
this category of non-residents.

The political situation in Azerbaijan becomes more stable, and the
human rights records are slowly improved. However, a lack of willing
of national reconciliation is a stimulation for detaining about 800
political prisoners and continuing falsification of elections. The
situation is aggravated by problems of high level of corruption,
dependance of judiciary from the executive power, and big split
between the legislation and practice of its implementation.

Many people who became the losers of the civic confrontation of
1993-1995 are now in the forced emigration. There is continuing a
practice of extradition of them by the CIS countries. These simplified
legal procedures basing at the mutual agreements violate the
provisions of Convention 1951 about the status of refugees because do
not include the effective assessment of real situation, personal
guilty and risk for  the health of extradited persons. Last Autumn,
the similar document has been agreed with Iran, what created the
well-justified fears of the Iranian political emigrants enjoining
asylum in Azerbaijan. Since 1998, even the Interpol is used to find
out and to arrest the emigrants from Azerbaijan.

>From other hand, the combination of political tension and economic
stagnation provocate many thousands of Azerbaijani citizens to seek
asylum in some Western countries with the false claim of being
political emigrants.

Therefore, the HRCA asks the governments of Western countries to use
their influence to resolve of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and to
improve the political and human rights situation in the country. It
would be the best way to prevent the migration flows from Azerbaijan
to their countries.

-- 
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