TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
AP4 (Applicant): Some 10,000 come from Armenia.
AP4 (Applicant): Between the armed forces of Armenia and NK, a high degree of integration exists.
AP4 (Applicant): Yerevan supplies arms and other military necessities to Stepanakert.
AP4 (Applicant): The support offered by Armenia is an open secret.
AP4 (Applicant): Yet Yerevan maintains that in NK and in the occupied Azeri territories around NK, there is not one military subunit.
AP4 (Applicant): Fifthly, there is the 2005 report from the International Crisis Group.
AP4 (Applicant): NK is highly dependent on Armenia for its military security and economic survival.
AP4 (Applicant): Over half its army are believed to be Armenian citizens.
AP4 (Applicant): Yerevan covers 50% of the budget through an interstate loan that is virtually interest-free and unlikely to be paid back.
AP4 (Applicant): The respondent attempts to discredit that report by producing a statement from one of the sources, Mr. Richard Giragosian.
AP4 (Applicant): However, that statement does not actually withdraw the opinion Mr. Giragosian apparently expressed.
AP4 (Applicant): Instead, he insists that in Karabakh, there are definitely Armenians serving.
AP4 (Applicant): Sixthly, there is the visit by President Sargassian to NK in 2012 and 2013.
AP4 (Applicant): He undertook that the Armenian army would never be, and the defense army, would never be short of any material resources and promised that NK would have the most contemporary combat weapons.
AP4 (Applicant): Seventhly, as the respondent accepts, Armenian passports are issued to individuals living in the disputed area.
AP4 (Applicant): Finally, the respondent has established a trust known as the All-Armenian Fund, which is a further means by which it provides financial support.
AP4 (Applicant): Thus, there is independent, consistent, and authoritative evidence that the respondent has a substantial military presence in the disputed area, that it supplies weaponry to NK and trains its soldiers, that the NK military is dependent for its existence and its effectiveness on the respondent, that the respondent provides financial support and other support.
AP4 (Applicant): And without all of the above, the NK regime could not survive.
AP4 (Applicant): The respondent bears a heavy evidential burden to rebut all of this material.
AP4 (Applicant): It has not done so.
AP4 (Applicant): No documents.
AP4 (Applicant): It relies heavily on the so-called expert evidence of Dr. Bukur Marku, which in itself
AP4 (Applicant): is based on undocumented alleged interviews.
AP4 (Applicant): The witness evidence relied on is not independent, is not detailed, not corroborated, and is largely directed to the wrong legal test in any event out of detailed control.
AP4 (Applicant): In summary, the NK regime survives only as a result of the respondent's military and other support, and the respondent has effective control.
AP4 (Applicant): To hold otherwise would be to cover up the respondent's open secret and to open up a human rights vacuum within the territory of the convention.
Dean Spielmann (JudgeP): Thank you Mr. Swaroop. I call Mr. Ivers.
AP1 (Applicant): With respect, we agree with the Chamber's judgment that the issues of jurisdiction, remedies, and merits are connected.
AP1 (Applicant): Evidence in respect of one can clearly be concurrently relevant with respect to others.
AP1 (Applicant): With this in mind, I turn to the merits.
AP1 (Applicant): I'm going to make five points.
AP1 (Applicant): The first one concerns the standard of proof.
AP1 (Applicant): The respondent government quote Orhan, which establishes that proof must be beyond a reasonable doubt.
AP1 (Applicant): But the matter goes a little further.
AP1 (Applicant): As was stated there, such proof may follow from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear, and concordant inferences, or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact.
AP1 (Applicant): And in that context, the conduct of the parties whose evidence is being obtained has to be taken into account.
AP1 (Applicant): Tannis tells us that this Chamber must view what the applicants can provide evidentially against the uncontroversial, albeit pre-ratification, factual backdrop of a last-minute flight for safety, an immediate militarization of the region, and their position as refugees ever since.
AP1 (Applicant): And as the Court has recognized, too inflexible a standard simply rewards the more effective perpetrators of violations for the extent of control they exercise over the ability of the claimants to obtain evidence.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicants have submitted, secondly, that the merits have submitted sufficient evidence to show that they owned or had the right to use the property from which they were displaced in the several rounds of written pleadings to date.
AP1 (Applicant): We have provided detailed submissions and evidential annexes concerning their ownership of property on no less than ten occasions between 2005 and 2013.
AP1 (Applicant): The intervening Government has also provided valuable information which supports the veracity of the applicants' property claims in its 21 June 2010 submissions which clarified the legal technicalities of land ownership in Lachin, the result of which is to reveal that had they not been displaced and left to continue their simple mountain life, they would have achieved the ownership of the properties within the legal reforms which updated the previous Soviet model of property rights.
AP1 (Applicant): Contrary to the submissions of the respondent Government, this array of documentary evidence is sufficient to show that they may be rightly regarded as possessing victim status for the purposes of the European Convention.
AP1 (Applicant): And the documentation annexed to the legal submissions to which I have referred represents the totality of the documentation which the applicants are able to assess while they remain in their present predicament as displaced persons residing in Azerbaijan.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. President, the legal representatives of the applicants encountered serious difficulties
AP1 (Applicant): in documenting their land ownership.
AP1 (Applicant): At the initial stage there was a very quick meeting with Kerem Yildiz.
AP1 (Applicant): It was under strict time restraints.
AP1 (Applicant): They didn't, the applicants, have their supporting documentation with them.
AP1 (Applicant): We've checked the short statements taken at the time and in their original language these simply spoke of leaving Lachin without personal possessions.
AP1 (Applicant): On the next visit, Mr. Yildiz was prevented by the intervening Government through no fault
AP1 (Applicant): of his own from entering Azerbaijan.
AP1 (Applicant): His assistant had to continue in difficult circumstances, hence the confusion in the subsequent statements drafted concerning when it was that the property documents were taken.
AP1 (Applicant): The Court will note that we're not dealing here with individuals well versed in the nuances of land law and its documentation.
AP1 (Applicant): We were able, actually, last night to clarify the matter with the two applicants which the Court know are here in person.
AP1 (Applicant): And the respondent Government are wrong to suggest that they could have left with the primary evidence of title.
AP1 (Applicant): Only one had that, but right in respect to the technical passports which were in fact taken with them on flight.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. President, they took what one might expect somebody in their circumstances may take.
AP1 (Applicant): They bundled up what documents they thought to be appropriate and that miscellaneous range has been lodged with this Court.
AP1 (Applicant): And the fact remains that in the absence of any challenge to their authenticity, these documents speak for themselves.
AP1 (Applicant): And indeed the respondent Government's reach has cast a chilling effect on the preparation of the applicant's case in other respects.
AP1 (Applicant): Not a single expert was prepared to assist with land rights in Lachin in 1991 and 1992 for fear of being identified by the respondent Government as being involved in these Court proceedings.
AP1 (Applicant): I'd ask you to contrast that consistent and open approach by the applicants with that of the respondent Government in relation to the merits.
AP1 (Applicant): Their first in early 2006 response to the Court's questions about efforts to assert property rights said this, Nagorno-Karabakh has not adopted any legal act that deprives the applicants of their right to enter the territory of Lachin or of their right to peaceably enjoy their property.
AP1 (Applicant): Everything in the garden was rosy.
AP1 (Applicant): Then on 4 December 2006, in a reply to the question of the Court, the respondent Government stated that the properties were destroyed as a result of the military actions in 1992.
AP1 (Applicant): And then following the submission of satellite photographs showing the existence of the properties as submitted by the applicants with the assistance of the intervening Government in August 2010, the position of the respondent Government has changed yet again.
AP1 (Applicant): They were asked in May 2010 about the applicable laws as to land ownership and title.
AP1 (Applicant): In response there was no mention of new owners or of anything about appropriation.
AP1 (Applicant): And then, and I quote the Chamber in its judgment, late in the day the respondent Government asserted at the oral hearing that all the land rights had been extinguished by the authorities of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in 1998.
AP1 (Applicant): Well then why say directly otherwise in 2006 if they knew that?
AP1 (Applicant): And surely they must have done.
AP1 (Applicant): And then finally, in further submissions in July 2012, they stated that there's disputed ownership of the property and others are currently registered as owners and produced documents which they put in Appendix 27.
AP1 (Applicant): Although it's the Grand Chamber in its judgment already has observed that Nagorno-Karabakh Republic are not a body that could grant property rights which could be recognized in law.
AP1 (Applicant): So which of those five wholly inconsistent assertions by the respondent Government is this court to rely upon?
AP1 (Applicant): Additionally they've said that we haven't requested restitution in intogram, we have checked the documentation.
AP1 (Applicant): Secondly that they've not expressed the applicants a wish to return to Lachin.
AP1 (Applicant): Again this desire is clearly set out in the witness statements.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. President the most powerful supporting evidence that the respondent Government could
AP1 (Applicant): have presented concerning this case in terms of rebutting all of the evidential presumptions and inferences from the material provided would be instances of IDPs returning to enjoy their property rights and they cannot point to a single one, not one.
AP1 (Applicant): We say that there is direct evidence which goes to support their claims concerning their inability to return and it's evidence of a deliberate and clear policy and it's one that's understandable when seen from the perspective of the Government.
AP1 (Applicant): The answer is to look at the matter as a whole and it's in historical context.
AP1 (Applicant): The displacement in 1992 of nearly all the Azeri Kurds in the area was deliberate, it wasn't accidental.
AP1 (Applicant): Why was it that the population left there?
AP1 (Applicant): These homes aren't in Nagorno-Karabakh, they're in Lachin.
AP1 (Applicant): The importance of Lachin isn't that it has rich farmlands or industrial complex.
AP1 (Applicant): By an accident of geography and by a matter of geology it is the corridor that links what the Armenian Government calls Arzak, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to Armenia.
AP1 (Applicant): And so its significance, this small area, is military and strategic.
AP1 (Applicant): Without it, Nagorno-Karabakh is an island in Azerbaijan and so the comments that you've already heard about and that we've put into the written submissions concerning the unity of the Armenian state between those two aspects has to be seen in the context that Lachin is uncomfortably in the middle.
AP1 (Applicant): There is also further evidence of a specific policy.
AP1 (Applicant): The settlement of the area has been encouraged by the Armenian Ministry of Diaspora, referred to in written submissions, and that's evidence capable of supporting the merits of the applicant's claim when you think about it.
AP1 (Applicant): Because they're being systematically excluded, which at minimum, we put it, facilitates the settlement by others.
AP1 (Applicant): What of the report at which the intervening government produced of a Syrian Armenian stating this, at the Ministry of Diaspora we were asked if we wanted to go to Karabakh.
AP1 (Applicant): What is Karabakh?
AP1 (Applicant): A cancer, a house, a job, livestock.
AP1 (Applicant): But Mr. President, whose house?
AP1 (Applicant): Why are there so many empty houses available?
AP1 (Applicant): Article 8 is engaged because these weren't properties, they were homes as well.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicants simply seek a declaration of their rights, restitution, or if not, practical compensation and just satisfaction.
AP1 (Applicant): We are mindful of the criticisms concerning the detail of our claim for just satisfaction and the arithmetic deployed within that claim.
AP1 (Applicant): Equally, we do not accept those criticisms as negating the claim.
AP1 (Applicant): We do accept further work may need to be done, and that work can be done, and we suggested that an expert report could be obtained, or if permitted to do so, we could file a corrigendum report to this claim within 15 days of the hearing.
AP1 (Applicant): And so to conclude, and I'll be seconds, it's time to acknowledge this wrong, to stop blaming the victims for their predicament, and accept what every informed observer recognizes, that they are refugees, helpless in a complex territorial and geopolitical argument in respect of which they have little or no influence.
AP1 (Applicant): They have lost their homes, lost their communities, and been unable to return, when in a single legislative act the respondent government could clearly allow their return.
AP1 (Applicant): Instead, they are entertained to the sight of others being encouraged to take their homes.
AP1 (Applicant): It's time, Mr. President, they had justice.
Dean Spielmann (JudgeP): Thank you, Mr. Ivers. I call Mr. Kostanyan.
GR1 (Government): With your permission, the position of the respondent will be presented by Mr. Robertson.
Dean Spielmann (JudgeP): Mr. Robertson.
GR2 (Government): Yes, Mr. President and your learned colleagues.
GR2 (Government): Article 35, the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies, is an obligation this court has described as primordial and fundamental.
GR2 (Government): Because your jurisdiction is supervisory, and you can't function as a court of first instance.
GR2 (Government): You've just heard the applicant say, of course, our claim isn't formulated.
GR2 (Government): It needs further work, perhaps an expert, and so forth.
GR2 (Government): Of course, it needs further work.
GR2 (Government): And that work is appropriately done at first instance courts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
GR2 (Government): In the Dimopoulos case, this court said that states, I quote, must have the opportunity to put matters right through their own legal system.
GR2 (Government): Now, in this case, Article 35 is actually no mere technical rule.
GR2 (Government): There can be no peace without justice.
GR2 (Government): And the only way forward for this wretched, intractable conflict that diplomats can't solve is if the domestic courts of Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan are allowed to demonstrate that they can do justice, independent and impartial justice, in Armenia's case, in Nagorno-Karabakh's case, to Azeri claimants just like the applicants.
GR2 (Government): Their judges and their lawyers in our witness statements assert that they are ready, willing, and able to do justice to these applicants.
GR2 (Government): By giving these courts that opportunity to show that the rule of law can surmount old ethnic hatreds and suspicions, this court could offer a positive step forward in conflict resolution by showing that the rule of law can succeed, not armies acquiring more arms.
GR2 (Government): And that is why it is so important that the domestic courts be given the opportunity to show that they can do justice to the dispossessed, no matter what ethnicity they bear.
GR2 (Government): Now, at least we are in no dispute about the law relating to Article 35.
GR2 (Government): We bear the burden of showing that there are appropriate and available remedies in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh for the convention claims raised by the applicant.
GR2 (Government): But then, the burden shifts to them to show that they've tried to access them.
GR2 (Government): Well, they haven't.
GR2 (Government): And they admit that they haven't.
GR2 (Government): They haven't lifted a finger to inquire about what's available to them in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
GR2 (Government): At paragraph 151 of their latest submissions, they say, oh, that we're ignorant of the law of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
GR2 (Government): We're lawyers from London.
GR2 (Government): Well, that's all very well.
GR2 (Government): There are more concerns and more lawyers in Europe than are in London.
GR2 (Government): There are lawyers in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.
GR2 (Government): There are judges.
GR2 (Government): And they've made witness statements, saying these remedies are available.
GR2 (Government): Are they lying, these respected and distinguished judges and lawyers, heads of the local bar associations?
GR2 (Government): Of course not.
GR2 (Government): Now, these applicants say, and their claim is disputed, but let's accept it, that they're owners of land and houses wrongfully dispossessed in 1992 by the Armenian army.
GR2 (Government): The evidence actually shows that the army that they thought was Armenian was, in fact, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Force, a body that was forged famously in defending the siege of Stepanakert, one of the most hideous European post-war crimes, the rivaling Srebrenica with the attacks on women and children from Sushi.
GR2 (Government): But let's assume that they can make out their facts, either that it was the Armenian forces or that their land is in the control of the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities.
GR2 (Government): What are their available remedies?
GR2 (Government): In Armenia, they can sue the army for damages.
GR2 (Government): They can get compensation for wrongful destruction of their homes and for their distress.
GR2 (Government): There's no doubt that they can sue the army for wrongful damage done abroad.
GR2 (Government): We, in our statements, have set out the Constitution, right to property, and Article 8.
GR2 (Government): Armenia adopts the European Convention.
GR2 (Government): Its courts actually offer exactly the remedies that they seek.
GR2 (Government): Article 114 of the Land Code, adopted in 2001, all disputes about land are subject to judicial procedures.
GR2 (Government): The Land Code of 1991, full compensation and damage caused to citizen or property is entitled to full compensation under Article 276.1 of the Civil Code.
GR2 (Government): That's in our evidence.
GR2 (Government): We set out the compensation claims pursuant to the convention that you can get in Armenia.
GR2 (Government): In Nagorno-Karabakh, they can sue, as other Azeris have done successfully, to have their land re-registered in their name.
GR2 (Government): In other words, in Nagorno-Karabakh, people in exactly the position of these applicants have had their homes restored.
GR2 (Government): From the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Force in possession, the court has ordered them to be re-registered in their names.
GR2 (Government): So we can find in the Nagorno-Karabakh evidence they have a constitutional right to property under Article 9 of the Constitution, and they have remedies in Nagorno-Karabakh under the Civil Code.
GR2 (Government): And the judges and the lawyers assert that they are ready, willing, and able to do that.
GR2 (Government): Our evidence in witness statements discharges our burden of showing that there are accessible courts, willing lawyers, and remedies with a reasonable prospect of success if they can establish the factual basis of their claim.
GR2 (Government): And that evidence includes evidence from the Office of the Human Rights Defenders.
GR2 (Government): She confirms that she would assist the claimants if they asked.
GR2 (Government): They complain that she hasn't taken action of her own volition.
GR2 (Government): Well, of course she needs to be asked by the applicants.
GR2 (Government): There's evidence from the Public Defender's Office in Armenia that they've acted for Azeris.
GR2 (Government): Evidence from the president of the Armenia Chamber of Advocates says, of course, lawyers in Armenia take cases from any persons without fear if the case is against the state.
GR2 (Government): In fact, one Armenian lawyer, a very experienced lawyer, whose name is Anahit Sargason, is actually very excited at the prospect of taking this very case.
GR2 (Government): And she explains that we uphold the general ethical duty followed by both civil and common lawyers alike that lawyers must not refuse to act on the basis of the nationality of their client or because the government is the respondent.
GR2 (Government): So there awaiting in Armenia are the courts, the judges, and the lawyers ready to process this claim.
GR2 (Government): And so why has what we've shown, we've proved that the courts are there, accessible remedies.
GR2 (Government): What is the reason why they haven't flown to Yerevan, an important European city served by many European airlines where the deputy foreign minister affirms that they have never denied entry to Azerbaijani citizens as a policy.
GR2 (Government): Any Azeri can obtain a visa for five euros at the airport and can go and hire local lawyers to begin their case.
GR2 (Government): Well, it's rather confusing because they talk about a general policy.
GR2 (Government): There's no general policy to deny Azerbaijani citizens entry to Yerevan.
GR2 (Government): That's nonsense, never been suggested.
GR2 (Government): So they can come to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and take legal advice and begin their action in the Armenian courts.
GR2 (Government): That's proved.
GR2 (Government): And the Armenian courts have jurisdiction over the army and can order compensation for any wrongdoing wherever in the world it's been perpetrated.
GR2 (Government): And they have independent judges and they have the convention.
GR2 (Government): So how is it that they haven't taken action?
GR2 (Government): They say that, oh, it's telling.
GR2 (Government): It's telling that no Azeri has ever succeeded in an Armenian court to recover property.
GR2 (Government): Is it telling?
GR2 (Government): What does it tell?
GR2 (Government): Maybe it tells that, in fact, the Armenian army wasn't involved, the fact situation was that it was the Nagora Karabakh Defense Force.
GR2 (Government): And that's why no Azeri has brought action.
GR2 (Government): Perhaps the Azeris who have a good case, or any who have a good case, have been deterred by the mistakes and misunderstandings that these applicants and their lawyers have labored under, that they can't somehow bring an action in Armenia.
GR2 (Government): So it may be telling that they have no good claims to bring, or it may be telling that they've been given mistaken advice by lawyers who admit that they don't have expertise in the legal systems of Armenia or Nagora Karabakh.
GR2 (Government): So that is no excuse for failing to exhaust domestic remedies if you have one.
GR2 (Government): No excuse that your lawyers don't understand the local law.
GR2 (Government): No excuse that you're poor.
GR2 (Government): It's no excuse that you don't know or don't fully understand what your rights are.