They Must Have Come to See That We Are Right or Wrong: Head of the Inner Hand Village

The newspaper "Hraparak" reports: During the recent Q&A session between the National Assembly and the government, Defense Minister Suren Papikyan insulted Kapan MP Anna Grigoryan, who was inquiring about the incursion of Azerbaijani forces into Inner Hand. He proudly declared that he had been to Inner Hand and was familiar with the situation.

We spoke with the administrative leader of Inner Hand, Khachik Baghdasaryan. He stated that he had heard that the minister had come to the area, but there had been no meeting with him or the villagers. He couldn’t say why; he only knows that they came to look and left. "They probably came to see the area, to check if we are right or wrong," he said.

He insisted that they noticed the Azerbaijanis between March 10-15 of this year, and prior to that, they had not seen them. However, the Ministry of Defense reported that they had arrived earlier; is it possible they arrived before you noticed them? "Yes, sometimes every shepherd takes their cattle somewhere; now they are very high up," he responded.

We noted that their villagers had assured the Human Rights Defender that they had gathered wood from that area two months ago and hadn’t noticed the enemy. The community leader did not rule this out. When asked if there had ever been such an incident before the 2020 war, where they would enter that area, he replied, "No, never... The shepherd of the village is the first to see; it’s a very high altitude, and now when there is snow, we don’t go up there. That day the cattle went up, didn’t come back, and he went up to see if they were on that height and noticed the tents. Now we don’t even go there to know what is happening," said the community leader, effectively denying the false claims of the Ministry of Defense that the territory of Kapan's Inner Hand village is not under Azerbaijani scrutiny, and therefore, there are no security issues.

For more details, see today’s issue of the newspaper.