Honorable Mr. President, the deficient situation of a series of disturbing and discouraging problems, stretching deeper roots each day, oblige us to inform you about their disastrous consequences.
“Free life in the fatherland” – it is with this idea that all Armenians stood up to free the fatherland from the enemy, to live and freely build a home. However 21 years have passed since the victory, but the building of a home in their own liberated land has remained a vital problem for Shushi’s inhabitants.
I consider it necessary to remind you about the fact that, while people worried about this problem are seeking pieces of land, there are several pieces of deserted land that belong to different officials and individual oligarchs. With my application filed earlier this year (N1/104), on May the 20th, I demanded that their names and the sizes of the land pieces belonging to them be made public, but I received a refusal and a strongly groundless answer, which is in contradiction with the NKR law on freedom of information.
If state statistical information about these land pieces will be published, then the Armenian will wake up and realize for whom he has made war and liberated the land of Artsakh. Is it possible that’s how it should be in a democratic country, or maybe European structures will remain indifferent to such dictatorial phenomena? I don’t think that Artsakh needs to be expressed as European emphasis.
The current situation, extremely disappointing and creating a strongly negative thought about the state and ruling classes, fully allows one to think that the Artsakhtsi, according to an unwritten law, doesn’t have the right to land in his liberated land.
“Since the first days of Shushi’s liberation, I have been living in Shushi for almost 20 years now. I patiently went through all the post-war trials, hoping that one day my turn ill come to have a piece of land in the homeland, where I can build a home and have a family. However, it recently became known that this is mostly a monopoly of oligarchs and officials. A clear expression of this is the stop of land allocation by Shushi’s local administration and, as a continuation, decision regarding the sale of the remaining free and hardly reachable pieces of land in Shushi through auction, following the “you have money, you will have land” principle. Of course, this means that having land, building a home and live in Artsakh is the right of those who have great sums of money and can win lands in the auction sales.
Please tell me, what should I call ‘Homeland’? The lands of officials and oligarchs? When due to the arbitrariness of the Artsakh government I don’t even have a small piece of the large lands, so I can build a home with my own hands’ work and have a family. The only thing left to do is draw the Diaspora’s attention and ask for support in finding a solution to this and similar problems, why not, even apply to European structures. Otherwise, I have no intention of complying with this “I don’t give a damn” way of working of the authorities and to wait in vain for justice and I myself will be forced to join the large groups of emigrants”, says Sipan Petrosyan, inhabitant of Shushi. Not having any property, he filed an application to the municipality of Shushi, received a refusal, motivated by the fact that in 2012, pieces of land were allocated to his two brothers at a cadastral price. However, all property rights belong to his brothers and the applicant is not authorized to carry out any construction works in the mentioned land pieces. As a matter of fact, the Shushi local administration’s response to the abovementioned application of Sipan Petrosyan is strongly groundless and illegitimate.
During the processing of such situations, as a natural consequence, a considerable part of cases discussed in European structures deal with similar situations, where all violations of human rights prescribed by the legislation of the NKR will be mentioned. More, in European structures such cases will simply end in favor of the applicant. As a result, the highest state authorities will have to face the obligation of finding a global solution to such problems.
Certain official, not being under verification by the competent state bodies, allowed themselves to abuse the official position in allocating land pieces in Shushi and in auction sales and sign a series of groundless contract with different persons. In order for these land piece allocation problems not to finally become a cause of emigration, we consider it necessary to ask you the following:
a) The government of the independent Republic of Artsakh should adopt a fair decision and carry out a very important project. That is recognizing all land pieces and ruins fit for building housing as prevailing state interest and allocate them with priority right to private individuals for building a house and settling in the fatherland, with the objective to prevent emigration from Artsakh and de-Armenization.
b) After the decision of the NKR government regarding the recognition as prevailing state interest takes effect, the basis of all the decision made by the prefecture and the city hall of Shushi regarding the whole process of allocation and auction sale of land pieces, from the past years as well as current ones, should be reinvestigated and supervised by a several competent state bodies.
c) The state must start proceedings against employees of local administration on grounds of not carrying out their obligations as prescribed by the law or deficiently carrying them out, as well as abusing their official position.
d) A permanent commission under the direct control of the NKR governmentshould be created; this commission should check in what measure the past land piece allocations are fair and legitimate, as the legal decisions of European structures have not yet been called to life. Competent state bodies and local administration must not discriminate between oligarchs, officials and simple NKR citizen, but must be guided by the principles of democracy․
Most honourable Mr. President, in order to find a solution to this and similar nation destructive problems, we are expecting a fair decision from you, in the name of our martyrs, our heroic freedom fighters and the protection of the rights of our victorious people, which as the right to live in its victorious land like a victorious person.
Thank you in advance.
NKR citizen Ruzanna Tsatryan