“Nothing has changed, the situation is the same. We are in a state of waiting, did they lie? What did they do?” said the father of Artur Arzumanyan, who died in the September 19 war.
On July 11, Boria Arzumanyan came to the RA government building with the wife of his dead son and a group of victims’ relatives, expecting to meet with the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. They ask the RA Prime Minister to take steps so that they can transfer the remains of their relatives buried in Artsakh to Armenia.
According to the victim’s father, no one from the Armenian government has met with them or answered their calls for more than ten days. The victim’s father, Boria Arzumanyan, is saddened by the attitude of the authorities.
“Nikol Pashinyan did not meet with us, no one in the Armenian government did. We wrote the phone numbers of the relatives of the victims, gave them, but they don’t call, we call, no one answers. People are ignored, it is not right,” he said.
His son, 37-year-old Arthur, volunteered to go to war when the enemy attacked Artsakh in the afternoon of September 19. “My son is a militiaman, he went to fight with all his heart, he did not fight for money, he went for the sake of the homeland and friendship,” says the father, who learned only after returning home in the evening that his son voluntarily left to fight against the enemy.
“I came home on the evening of the 19th. My wife was worried that Arthur had gone to war. On the morning of the 20th, they lied and said that Arthur was wounded. I went to Stepanakert and saw him dead in the morgue,” Boria Arzumanyan recalled the difficult days.
The Arzumanyans are from the village of Arajadzor, Martuni region of NK. Arthur was a farmer; he raised cows, pigs and sheep. “All of Artsakh knew him. He took the machine gun and went seven kilometers on foot to protect the Khachen bridge,” says the father, noting that his son was killed by an unmanned aerical vehicle.
“There were ten people, eight were killed and two were injured from the UAV strike,” he said.
It should be noted that the bridge on the Khachen River was of vital importance for the residents of Martakert region, NK. The hostile side has always wanted to capture it in order to cut the connection between the Martakert region and the capital Stepanakert. This was the only connecting road.
After finding his son in the Stepanakert morgue, the father wanted to move and bury his son in their village, Arajadzor, but they did not allow him. He buried the boy in the Fraternal Pantheon of Stepanakert. “They didn’t let us bury him in the village. We buried him in Stepanakert on September 22. After that, we wanted to go to the village, but they didn’t let us.”
And when it became known that they had to be forcibly deported from Artsakh, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities assured that they would transfer his son’s body before he reached Yerevan.
“I am waiting until now, but there is no news. Now we are waiting to at least bring my younger son’s body; one of my sons has a grave in the village,” says the father bitterly.
Artur Arzumanyan is the father of three children. He has two daughters and one son, 14, 12 and 9 years old.
The other son of Boria Arzumanyan, Vahagn Arzumanyan, was killed during the 2016 four-day war. “That son of mine died at the age of 37,” says the father who lost his sons in the wars.
Narek Kirakosyan