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Armenia’s Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan on Sunday issued a statement on the latest incident in which the Azerbaijani troops threatened residents of Tegh, a village in Armenia’s Syunik Province, with firearms and did not allow them to gather the harvested grass.

In particular, on 26 June several residents of Tegh village went to their property lands to collect the grass they had harvested on June 23 and 24.

When they were about 300 meters away from the Azerbaijani position in the administrative territory of Tegh community, they noticed that 5 Azerbaijani armed servicemen were approaching them shouting aggressively.

Approaching about 150 meters, they pointed their weapons at the villagers, started threatening, shouting and not allowing them to collect the grass. Two of them behaved more aggressively and demanded from the villagers not to come to those areas at all or try to use the lands.

The incident took place in a place called Andrun Stones, which is located at the intersection of Tegh, Aravus and Khnatsakh villages of Syunik province. The lands of that place are used by the residents of the three villages. There are both privately owned and community-owned lands. There are pastures used by the residents of these three villages to graze their cattle.

The villagers were able to collect the grass only on June 27, when the commanders of the 1st Army Corps of the Armenian military, the heads of the local self-government bodies went to that place.

This information has been submitted to the human rights defender by the villagers, including the villagers who went to collect the grass, as well as the head of the Tegh community. All the information has been checked by the defender’s office.

“This criminal act of the Azerbaijani servicemen against the citizens of the Armenia took place in the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia,” Tatoyan said.

“It is obvious that such obvious criminal acts of the Azerbaijani servicemen are aimed at depriving the citizens of Armenia of other vital rights to life, to be engaged in cattle breeding, to earn a family income. All this should be viewed on an ongoing basis, as they regularly commit similar acts (threats to shepherds, theft of animals, etc.) against residents of villages of both Gegharkunik and Syunik Provinces.

“This incident once again proves that protection of Armenia’s population from criminal actions of the Azerbaijani armed forces urgently require creation of a security zone,” reads the statement.