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Written statement on 60th anniversary of Azerbaijanisâ€™ deportation from Armenia to be presented to PACE

14 January 2009 09:04 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Lachin Sultanova â€“ APA. Written statement on the 60th anniversary of Azerbaijanisâ€™ deportation from Armenia will be presented to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), APA reports. The statement prepared by the member of Azerbaijani delegation to PACE Ganira Pashayeva notes that tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis were expelled from their historical lands in 1948 and their rights have been violated by Armenia for 60 years. The document says that thousands of people live missing their native lands, grow old and pass away with this feeling. â€œAll historical-cultural monuments belonging to Azerbaijanis are being destroyed in Armenia. The rights of all the nations deported in the USSR in the reign of Joseph Stalin were restored after his death. Some nations were allowed to return to their native lands. Among the deported people only the rights of the Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia were not recognized and this factor has negative impact on the image of the Council of Europe, which declared protection of human rights its priority,â€ he said.

The statement says when Armenia SSR began to collapse, the country continued pursuing policy to establish monoethnic state strongly condemned by the Council of Europe, pursued ethnic cleansing policy in 1988 and expelled all the Azerbaijanis from their historical lands.
â€œFor 20 years Armenia has been violating the rights of the Azerbaijanis deported from Armenia in 1988,â€ the statement says.
According to the statement, the Council of Europe should condemn the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in 1948 and exert influence on Armenia to recognize these peopleâ€™s rights to return.

At least 20 parliamentarians from 5 countries should sign the document so that it can be adopted as the written statement of PACE. Ganira Pashayeva said there were a lot of parliamentarians in PACE supporting right position of Azerbaijan.

Another document to be distributed in the session is connected with Guba graveyard. Ganira Pashayeva said there was footage about it.
â€œThe footage covers reveal of the graveyard and PACE President LluÃs Maria de Puigâ€˜s visiting the graveyard together with speaker of Azerbaijani parliament Ogtay Asadov,â€ she said.