One of the main reports on the agenda of summer session of Parliament Assembly of Council of Europe on “Forgotten people in Europe: protection of fundamental rights of people have changed their places for a long period of time” caused to serious discussions. Though the member of Azerbaijan delegation Rafael Huseynov welcomed the presentation of the report prepared by the UK deputy John Greenway he pointed out its defects and stressed the necessity of passing to the concrete actions in order to solve this problem. It says in the report: Can refugees and internally displaced people be called “forgotten people”, “forgotten strata of society”? Almost every day press writes about them. Periodically the documents, reports about these people are prepared, resolutions are adopted There is no session of the Council of Europe where the destiny of these people is not discussed. There is a separate commission in the Parliamentary Assembly dealing with refugees. Having all these can refugees and internally displaced people still be called forgotten people? No, simply it is not right to call them forgotten. It is a week phrase to use while comparing the greatness of their tragedy and out sluggishness in taking decisive steps for ending their tragedy. We should call the reality by its name-they are the strata that we are indifferent to. If hundreds of people have been refugees and internally displaced people for years, our efforts have ended only with these unsuccessful negotiations and we can not take any concrete steps for solving their problems we have no right to support ourselves. If 11 from 47 countries among CEU members have refugees and internally displaced people Azerbaijan is the most unique one. Azerbaijan is the only country in the world and in Europe that 1/8 of its population is refugees and internally displaced people. Azerbaijan has 636 586 internally displaced people, about 300 000 refugees departed from historical places in Armenia 20 years ago and about 1 million people departed from Fargana during the collapse of USSR. All these people used to have their own permanent living places, original geography, history and ethnography regarding to those lands. These poor people did not only lose their lands and homes. The grievous blow was done to their memory. Most of these people historically were busy with agriculture. They used to have habits as farmers and cattle-breeder. These people knew how to treat soil. The refugees and internally displaced people had to move to the center of Azerbaijan, especially to Baku. The Azerbaijani occupied lands by Armenia have been out of international control for 16 years. The people who know how to treat those lands have been living in tent cities and trains for years and Armenian violators have grown narcotic plants on those lands and destroyed the nature. The children who became refugees are grown ups now and have their own families. They have also been deprived from the opportunity to cultivate the lands as their grandfathers. Demography is spoilt and illnesses are increased.
During the normal lifestyle there used to be many musicians, scientists and sportsmen among these people, all of them used to get good education. Virtually, during these years we have lost thousands scientists, intellectuals and educated people. This is the killed generation and their mass destruction is continuing silently. But we are still talking about civil European values. When we have this is kind of tragedy do we have a right to talk this way? We don’t have a right to live trouble free till the lost world of these people is not returned. While eating, having fun with the people we love and dreaming when looking through the old photos in the family album we shouldn’t forget that there are millions Europeans deprived of their comfort. There are people whose everything was destroyed even old photos from family albums. Not only the present but also the past of these people was stolen. One million Azeri people have been presented this sorrow by Armenia and big powers supporting them. The authors of the analogous tragedies done in the other European countries are the other powers. However all of them are relatives. As they all serve to evils. We are just talking these tragedies without solving them this problem. How long will we just talk? It is not my question. It is the question of about 3 million refugees and internally displaced people in Europe. We can not run away from this question. We have to answer it. But we couldn’t answer it till this day.
AzerTAg
