“This nurse, in red dress, said, let’s sing and dance. The one said, “I will bury you”, in a conversation with Forrights.am, Mrs. Liana shows a video from the days of captivity and tells how the Azerbaijanis treated her. The video shows false Azerbaijani propaganda: how the Azerbaijani nurses bandage the hand of Ms. Liana, and outside the frame, they subjected her to psychological pressure, forced her to sing Azerbaijani songs. It is noteworthy that the violence was applied by the Azerbaijani medical workers, who were supposed to be endowed with humanity.
“Look, in this video, they give us bread, sausage, and they pretend to be good people. After they finished videotaping, they began to misbehave with us. I am an old woman, the nurse tied my hair in a ponytail was laughing at me,” says Mrs. Liana and notes that their desire to show a lie was so great that they bandaged her healthy hand and presented it on the Internet as if they were providing medical care.
Liana Avanesova is from Sarnaghbyur village of Askeran region of Artsakh. She was captured after the Azerbaijani attack on September 19. Forrights.am has already presented the story of Gayane Gabrielyan, who was in captivity with Liana.
On September 19, Liana Avanesova went with her daughter to collect wood from the forest for the stove, as there was no other way to cook food; Sarnaghbyur was deprived of electricity.
“We took the wood to come home. I heard loud shots. I ran for a while, then threw the wood and went to the village head’s house. There was a mound near their house, he took us there. There were not many people in the village. The adults took a car, left the children at home, and went to the city to get food. The village head gathered all the children and brought them under the tree. The shots were getting stronger, there were explosions, small stones were falling on us from those explosions.”
Mrs. Liana said that the fragments of one of the explosions reached their hiding place and touched them and their children. “My ears were closed, the children were crying, but the sound seemed to be heard from far away. I saw that there was blood on my son’s face, then I saw that my daughter’s cheeck was punctured, shrapnels were in her gums, neck and legs: all of people there were injured.”
The head of the village, as Mrs. Liana recalls, took ten injured children to the hospital in his car. Four of them remained in the village: Liana, Gayane, Gemma and Liparit. They are mother and son. The village chief’s father and his wife’s mother, as well as two minor brothers, Nver and Mikael, die from the injuries they received from the shrapnels. “The bodies stayed there for three days.”
The injured and helpless residents of Sarnaghbyur stayed in the house of the village head for three days under the care of Liana, as she was the only one who was injured only slightly. “They were all injured, I’m very sorry to mention, but I found a bucket for them to take care of their natural needs. I was looking for food for them, I got some compote, I fed them with whatever I found. I found bread from the village head’s house; it was very dry and hard, we couldn’t eat it.
On the third day of the brutality, the life of Sarnaghbyur residents, who were left alone, becomes more difficult. The Azerbaijanis who entered the village captured them. “They asked me for water in their own language. It seemed to me that I was in shock if I amd hearing Azerbaijani speech. I shouted, ‘the Turks came’. We didn’t remain there for half an hour: they took us away.” Before leaving Sarnaghbyur, the enemy soldiers robbed the forcibly displaced residents of the village, stealing their gold jewelry and money.
Ms. Liana remembers that at some point the Azerbaijanis took them away on foot. “Gayane, Gemma and Liparit could not walk, they were carried on a stretcher. They tortured him: took him so that he would touch the stones, dragged him. It was a stony field. I was walking, my legs were sprained.”
Ms. Liana and others were taken to Akna. They were subjected to psychological violence there. “The nurses told me to sing in Azerbaijani, let’s dance, they forced me to sing the song related to Pashinyan. I didn’t sing, I said I don’t know Azerbaijani. Then, I’m not injured, but they took me to the medical center, they bandaged my healthy hand pointlessly, so that they could take pictures as if they were helping a wounded person.
After being held captive for five days, the Azerbaijanis handed the Sarnaghbyur residents along with other people to the rescuers of Artsakh, threatening to tell journalists in Armenia only positive information about the Azerbaijanis. They offered to stay in Sarnaghbyur as well, with the demand to change their nationality and faith.
Narek Kirakosyan