WHO ARE THE REAL HOSTAGES?

It would never have occurred to Dilqam Asgarov that he would ever be taken hostage and accused of subversive activities in his own village. Like all the innocent civilians in these parts, he did not even suspect that his once native village of Saplar in Azerbaijan's Kalbacar District might be occupied by neighbouring Armenia, and that visiting his native village, which had been razed to the ground and looted, and attending his father's grave would turn into a major threat to his own life. But strange things happen…

Last week news agencies reported that an Armenian task force had arrested Dilqam Asgarov and Sabhaz Quliyev, who was with him, in the occupied village of Saplar in Kalbacar District. Reports of the fate of another friend, Hasan Hasanov, were contradictory - first the Armenians said that Hasan had been killed during a so-called special operation, and then they said nothing at all. Video pictures of Dilqam's arrest and photographs of Sabhaz being taken prisoner were freely distributed by the Armenian media, but neither Hasan nor his body could be seen in these dispatches.

The Armenians, as one would expect, immediately declared these arrested innocent civilians to be saboteurs, accusing them of possession of a whole arsenal of weapons and ammunition and the murder of a 17-year old Armenian, Smbat Tsakanyan. Their sin was to let slip the opportunity to boast about "the valour of the glorious self-defence forces of the NKR" and to once again accuse Azerbaijan of attempting to undermine the fragile peace on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front line.

We have reported on many occasions about who really has a vested interest in provocations and the destabilization of the situation at the front. And the "valour" of the Armenian soldiers has already been illustrated by the fact that Dilqam Asgarov and Sahbaz Quliyev had until then crossed the "fail-safe" Armenian "defence" line several times without any trouble to visit their native area and take videos of the current situation in the Armenian-occupied Azerbaijani villages. And they made no secret of this. The film taken on an amateur camera with synchronized commentary by Dilqam was posted on the Internet, relayed on local TV channels and proved very popular among the Azerbaijani population banished from their own homes. Someone recognized from the hand-held and therefore rather shaky pictures their own home, destroyed by an Armenian shell; another, with a tear in his eye, shared his memories of his native area, while another looked closely hoping he wouldn't see the destroyed and desecrated graves of his loved ones in the village cemetery. At the same time, for some reason the Armenian special services had provided no evidence of any subversive activity by Dilqam Asgarov and his friends. What kind of saboteur would start a bonfire in an open wood to cook a kebab?   

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence has officially stated that the persons detained by the Armenians are not serving in the Azerbaijani army. "The Defence Ministry states that there are no grounds for such charges. The occupied lands are the territory of sovereign Azerbaijan and the crossing into these territories by Azerbaijanis and their free movement there cannot be prohibited. These individuals have not violated the state border, as the Armenian side claims, because the territories illegally controlled as a result of the occupation by an unrecognized regime are Azerbaijani lands, recognized by the UN," the ministry's statement says.

The Azerbaijani State Commission for the affairs of prisoners, hostages and missing persons has also stated that the persons taken hostage by the Armenians on the territory of Kalbacar District have not violated anyone's state borders because they were on UN-recognized Azerbaijani territory.

On the other hand, these citizens taken hostage by the Armenians are under the protection of the Geneva Convention, and any approach to them must be made within the framework of these international documents. "The Armenian Defence Ministry is correct that the 'arrested persons are not prisoners of war'. Because they are civilians who grew up on Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenian armed formations, and the graves of their fathers and forefathers have remained in these lands. Civilians must be treated in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention on the protection of the civilian population at a time of war," the State Commission stated.

However, Armenia has once again ignored international norms by putting out an eye of one of the hostages, Sahbaz Quliyev. Need one mention the numerous cases of the inhuman treatment by the Armenian military of innocent civilians during the Karabakh war? And, what's more, the leaders themselves and ideological inspirers of Armenian terrorism, like the incumbent Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan and the writer Zori Balayan make no secret of this.

The whole of last week the Armenians have given the representatives of the International Red Cross Committee no opportunity to meet with the hostages. This is a clear attempt to gain time to arrange a complete fabrication of the case against the innocent civilians.

In any event, Azerbaijan is using every opportunity to get the arrested persons back. The chairman of the State Committee for the affairs of refugees and forced migrants, Ali Hasanov, has said that President Ilham Aliyev has taken the question of the release of the hostages under his personal control and given instructions to the relevant structures.

Meanwhile, Armenia continues to remain captive to its own unfounded ambitions and territorial claims against all neighbouring states.