Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan reports:

“Archiv documents show that during the Soviet era, there were cases of border disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when the Azerbaijani authorities took part in officially announced discussions, but at the same time organized attacks on Armenian villagers, occupied their lands, and then turned those occupied lands into subject of “discussions” (Barana, now Noyemberyan, Koghb, Koti, Dovegh and other villages).

For example, despite the 1923 resolution of the Land Disputes Commission of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Federation According to the decision of April 28, 2012, which envisaged the transfer of only 5,000 hectares of land in the Shinikh-Ayrum region to Kazakh province, the Kazakh Land Development Group had specially drawn up a completely different plan, ignoring the requirement of that decision..

For example, despite the decision of the Land Executive Commission of the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasian Federation on 28 April, 1923, which provided for the transfer of only 5,000 desyatin (archaic land measurement used in tsarist Russia – 1 desyatina equalse to 1.09 hectares) of land (5462.69 hectares) in the Shinikh-Ayrum region of Kazakh to Ghazakh, the Kazakh Land Development Group made a completely different plan.

At the same time, the Azerbaijani local authorities illegally took over more land from the territory belonging to the Armenian SSR than envisaged by the decision. In particular, they intimidated the local forester, occupying an area of ​​about 7,000 desyatin (7.64 hectares), increasing their “acquisition” to 11,800 desyatin (12,891.96 hectares), and making it the subject of discussion.

Another example is that since May 1922, the final work of the commissions in Tavush, Caravansara (Ijevan), the border regions of the Kazakh provinces, and the commissions has been constantly delayed, as most of the lands belonging to the Armenians were seized by the Azerbaijani initiative and refused to return. This also made it difficult for the villagers to use the pastures, forests and water resources.

In general, according to the archive documents, the prehistory of the disputes between the villages of the mentioned provinces shows that the disputes often arose because of the large Azerbaijani landlords (in archives are mentioned as landowners) who sold their lands to the Armenians and then demanded them back without grounds.

The problem was that the authorities of Soviet Armenia at that time did not respond properly to prevent the violation of the rights of Armenian peasants.

These facts, as lessons learned, should be taken into account in order to prevent violations of the rights of the border residents of the Republic of Armenia nowadays.

Along with security and other components, decisions on the borders of the Republic of Armenia should be based on the protection of the rights of villagers, in general, excluding any mechanical approach.”