Relatives of missing servicemen to march to Hakari Bridge if Armenian  authorities fail to act - protest outside the government building

ArmInfo.  Relatives of missing servicemen held a protest outside the Armenian government building.  They announced that they are giving the Armenian authorities exactly  one week to obtain at least some information about their relatives.  If they remain silent, they will take action independently, seek  other channels of communication to advance the issue, and even march  to the Hakari Bridge.

In an interview with journalists, Arsen Ghukasyan, the uncle of one  of the servicemen missing in the 44- day war, Sarkis Ghukasyan, said  that on Saturday they held a meeting with his parents to discuss  their next steps and reach a mutual decision. Specifically, as  Ghukasyan explained, since the country's authorities have taken no  positive steps to clarify the fates of missing Armenian servicemen  for six years, they are giving them exactly one week to respond to  the question of what they intend to do to clarify the fates of their  relatives. "If they don't respond, we intend to find our own channels  of communication to resolve this issue. Specifically, we intend to  find similar relatives of Azerbaijani servicemen who have gone  missing since the 1990s. We are prepared to do everything in our  power to help them learn the fate of their loved ones who disappeared  on our side, since they are unable to do so themselves, but of  course, we expect the same from them. The fate of our children cannot  remain uncertain for so long," the uncle of the missing serviceman  emphasized.

In this regard, he called on compatriots who know the burial sites of  Azerbaijanis to help them create a database that they can share with  the Azerbaijani side. "As part of this initiative, we intend to reach  the village of Teh, from where we can walk to the Hakari Bridge, in  order to establish at least some contact. It's impossible to say yet  whether this will be successful; time will tell. Even if it's through  a third country, it doesn't matter; we don't count on this  government. I think the situation is the same in Azerbaijan,"  Ghukasyan noted.

Speaking about the last time the parents approached Armenian Prime  Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the uncle of a missing serviceman noted  that he personally last met with the prime minister in 2021. "Other  parents attended these meetings regularly, but were never told  anything concrete. For Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham  Aliyev's statements that they have no [prisoners or missing persons -  ed.] are much more convincing than the videos the parents show them.  In other words, everyone has abandoned the issue. We realized they're  simply not addressing it. Therefore, we are now even willing to  cooperate with the Azerbaijani side to resolve this issue. We don't  intend to share any state secrets with them or befriend them; we  simply want to know the fate of our children," the uncle of the  missing serviceman noted. He also expressed his conviction that the  Commission established to investigate the circumstances of the war  unleashed by Azerbaijan on September 27, 2020, had done no work and  was simply a "soap bubble." After this, a group of approximately two  dozen parents and relatives of the missing went home, promising to  return in a week.

The exact number of Armenian prisoners of war and hostages held in  Azerbaijani prisons remains unknown. According to the latest data  from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as of  August 2024, approximately 1,000 people are considered missing on the  Armenian side, with approximately 300 of these individuals being  considered missing following the latest escalation in the  Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone between autumn 2020 and autumn 2023.  All data was compiled by the ICRC based on requests from the  relatives of the missing. The ICRC also reported that among these 300  people, there are several dozen appeals concerning cases where the  family did not agree with the DNA data presented by the state.