It must be noted that in 1991, in the first years of the armed aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, Nora Vartanesovna Varagyan left the place of her residential registration121 in Nasimi district. Subsequently, she was not registered at any other domicile. In 2007, she filed an application with the Passport Office of the Police Department of Nasimi district to receive an identity document. But the Passport Office of the Police Department of Nasimi district turned down her application since her registration as resident had been ended, after which N. Varagyan filed a complaint in the local court against the actions of the official of the Police Department of Nasimi district. The Nasimi District Court and the Baku Court of Appeals ruled to deny her claim.122
4. Persons completely integrated into the Azerbaijani society and not wishing to live elsewhere. They are linked to the Armenian ethnicity in name only, but not in self-awareness. An example: The father of Elvira Movsesyan who doomed his family and children to decades of trials and tribulations, or Anzhela Oganova.
Anzhela Oganova: “I love my city so much. Not for a second did I want to leave the place,” said Anzhela Oganova as we met. <…> In 1992, she was forced to quit her job. <…> “She came running to the Office of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly and voiced her complaint: she was tormented and battered by her neighbors,” tells Sayad. After her mother died, Anzhela had to face a problem that proved unsolvable. She had to register her apartment in her name. It was not even an apartment, but a room in a communal apartment that she shared with other people. But her neighbors had already privatized the remaining portion of that apartment, and now they had to boot and drum out this lonely and helpless woman driving her away from the room she occupied. <…> The Civil Registry Office refused to accept her documents because Anzhela was Armenian. Her problems aggravated. Later on, her neighbors burst into her room and severely brutalized her. The only one she could call was Sayad. “When I called the ambulance and mentioned her name, they refused to come over. Then I had to call again and give them my own mother’s first and second names”, told us Sayad.123
Elvira Movsesyan: Elvira Vladimirovna Movsesyan is one of such people. <…> For several years now, she has been trying to leave Azerbaijan, without any success. Elvira has no documents and therefore, she is next to no one. She was born in 1968 in Sharur District of Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (now: Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan). She was born to Armenian father and Azerbaijani mother. <…> In 1990, her father traveled to Armenia to figure out the situation there. After staying there for about a month, he realized that he was not welcome in Armenia as his wife was Azerbaijani. In addition, he had no knowledge of either Russian or Armenian and could speak only Azerbaijani. <…> Shortly after that, my brothers got a visit from the law-enforcement officers. They told them to leave immediately threatening to arrest them on false charges and have them sentenced to lengthy imprisonment <…>. Our neighbors divided in two factions. Some of them helped us, while others were bellicose and requested that we leave. <…> We could not leave the house and were stuck indoors. <…> In 1999, Elvira decided to take her mother’s last name. “Our mother, a poor old woman, put together all the necessary paperwork, but passport department refused to take them. The authorities did not even examine the documents. Moreover, they took Elvira’s Soviet passport along with the paperwork that her mother had put together.124
No one, not even Azerbaijani researchers125, know the real number of such people and their subsequent fate. Yet, a small number of publications and reports prepared by international organizations can give a glimpse of their living conditions.
In Baku, the paramedics of the Ministry of Emergency Situations discovered the body of an elderly Armenian woman. The paramedics of the Ministry of Emergency Situations discovered a body of an elderly woman in Surakhany District of Baku. As 1news.az was informed by the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, their hot-line 112 received an alert that Rosa Baykovna Bagdasarova (born in 1934) had not answered a knocks on the door and telephone calls for a long time. The rescue team of the Ministry arrived quickly on site. They penetrated R. Bagdasarova’s apartment on the sixth floor through the balcony of a neighboring apartment. In the apartment, they found the lifeless body of its owner. A medical team was called in to certify the death. The Police Department of Surakhany District informed 1news.az that the 79-year-old woman was an ethnic Armenian and died of natural causes.126
After examining the problems of ethnic Armenians living in Azerbaijan, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) in its report for 2011127 states that the number of people of Armenian descent in Azerbaijan fluctuates between 700 and 30,000128 persons. These people are divested of the opportunity to exercise their rights as citizens of Azerbaijan and do not enjoy social protection. They never applied to receive Azerbaijani passports in exchange for Soviet passports and today can be virtually described as stateless persons.
Considering that the report reflects the official statements, this last point that the persons in question never applied to receive documents of their own accord is quite contestable. The cases of Zhanna Shahmuradyan and Elvira Movsesyan attest to the contrary; they duly applied to receive documents, but were turned down. As a result, one of them filed a court petition, and the other had to break the law and use the documents of another person. And these are not isolated cases. The Azerbaijani press reports another 30 court petitions to obtain a passport.129
In Azerbaijan, ethnic Armenians face threats in their daily lives. Born in mixed families of Armenians and Azerbaijanis, they prefer to take up the last name of the Azerbaijani parent to avoid bureaucratic hassles, and those who are unable to do so seek to prove their ‘Azerbaijani descent’ in a court of law to be allowed to integrate into the society. The case of Firuza Bagirova130 provides an illustrative example; at an advanced age of 74, she was forced to repudiate her Armenian father and portray her mother in what the traditional morality of the Caucasus views as disgrace only to be allowed to leave the country. The name of her Armenian father appearing in her identification documents keeps 74-year-old Bagirova stranded in Azerbaijan.
A 74-year-old woman in Baku renounces her Armenian stepfather, and the sum of 6,000 USD paid in legal fees is lost. In 1938, Halima Bagirova, pregnant at the time, left her Azerbaijani husband Isu Jafar-oghli and eloped with an Armenian named Khoren Khachaturyan. In the same year, her daughter, Firuza Bagirova was born, and in the birth certificate, H. Bagirova indicated the name of Isa Jafarov as the father of her child. However, later as Kh. Khachaturyan received the documents, he introduced changes in them and indicated his name as the child’s father. “Therefore, some of my documents indicate Isa and some others mention Khoren as the name of my father, in the remaining documents my father’s name is left blank” <…> Meanwhile, 74-year-old Firuza Bagirova reports that she is not allowed to leave the territory of Azerbaijan because of the name of her Armenian father appearing in her identification documents. “I traveled all over Azerbaijan. I want to get back the name of my Azerbaijani father to be able to travel to Meshed and Karbala”.