Your trusted source

August 30 marks the International Day of the Disappeared, a day created to draw attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned at places and under poor conditions unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives.

Artsakhpress reports that 773 missing people are officially registered in Artsakh of whom
250 are military and 523 are civilians. The fate of the missing people in Artsakh is under the focus of International Committee of the Red Cross that supports the authorities in their efforts towards clarifying the fate of missing persons and addressing the needs of their families.

“The disappearance of a loved one may leave the family without economic support and often they will have to use up their dwindling resources on the search for their missing relative. Families also suffer on an emotional and social level - they might experience isolation, sadness and marginalization and often need long-term support in order to overcome these difficulties and regain control of their lives,” ICRC said on the occasion of the Day.

To note, in December 2018 a memorandum by the Artsakh Republic foreign ministry on the issue of missing persons in the context of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict was disseminated in the UN.

According to that document, the issue of missing persons in the Karabakh conflict emerged long before the full-scale war, which was unleashed by Azerbaijan in 1991. Individual cases of hostage-taking and kidnapping of persons of Armenian nationality were taking place in Artsakh already in 1988–1989. The issue of hostages and missing persons became more acute as the conflict escalated. The practice of taking hostage persons of Armenian nationality became widespread during “Operation Ring” for the deportation of Armenian villages of Artsakh in 1991.

For eight months of 1991 only, 640 peaceful residents from different villages of Artsakh were illegally arrested or captured by Azerbaijani authorities; 127 Armenians were captured and sentenced on the ground of false accusations to different terms and 31 of them died as a result of widely practiced regular torture in Azerbaijani prisons and concentration camps.