Families of Karabakh war victims seek to transfer remains to Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net - Families of the victims of the Second Karabakh war seek to transfer their remains to Armenia, according to a complaint submitted to the ECHR, RFE/RL’s Armenian service reports.

It will soon be 15 months that Nadezhda Arzumanyan goes to asleep and wakes up with just one wish: to have her son's remains moved from the Martuni cemetery in Karabakh (Artsakh) to Armenia. Vachagan Dadalyan, 25, the commander of an anti-aircraft missile battery platoon who had fought in previous wars in Artsakh, was killed in the battles on September 19, 2023, when Azerbaijan launched an offensive after starving the entire population of Karabakh for months.

It was only the day after his death that they finally told Nadezhda the news. Her husband had died young, her daughter had passed away at 14, and Vachagan was the only family she had. There had been plans to transfer her son's body to Yerablur Cemetery in Yerevan but at that time, the roads out of Martuni were closed. Later, during the population’s forced deportation to Armenia, they were told it was impossible.

The body of Sergeant Sasun Avanesyan, another Karabakh Armenian who died in the early hours of the September 19 attack, was buried in a mass grave in Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh. They never had the chance to place a tombstone or inscribe his name.

Sasun’s brother, Davit, managed to survive an Azerbaijani siege only to be killed in a fuel depot explosion in Karabakh amidst the chaotic exodus of Armenians from their homes.

Human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights this week on behalf of 36 families of the victims of the attach of September 2023: "Our demand is to record violations and force Azerbaijan to hand over the remains and relics to the families."

Before filing with the Strasbourg court, Sahakyan's office gathered information on 46 victims of the September offensive, created a map showing where each one was buried, and submitted that map to the court as well.