The residents of the village of Surakhani cannot settle in their apartments occupied by the refugees 28 years ago

Baku/25.09.20/Turan: During the Karabakh war, tens of thousands of refugees moved into the homes of Baku residents making them homeless. Heydar Aliyev verbally ordered not to evict the refugees, although the rights of the legal owners were clearly violated. At the end of the nineties, the Supreme Court of the country, following a complaint by the organization “Homeless Baku residents”, confirmed their undoubted right to use their housing. However, some Baku residents are still forced to live in rented apartments.

In 1994, 162 apartments in a 9-storey unfinished building at Baku, in the village of Surakhani (Garachukhur settlement), quarter 4042-4046, building 45, was captured by refugees. The house was built for the workers, they have been living in rented apartments ever since. The same seizure took place at 15 Bakirli Street in the same district of Baku.

Since 2010, workers have repeatedly applied to the State Committee for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons with a demand to evict their families from the house intended for the families of workers. However, nothing has changed in February 2011, when the State Program on improving the living conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons, which provided for the construction of residential buildings for these people in Baku and Sumgayit, was adopted. In a letter to Turan, a group of Baku workers claimed that the program affected those who lived in student hostels. Refugees were evicted from there, and before the eviction, they began to get urgently divorced so that the state would give one apartment to their ex-husband, and another to their ex-wife. Then the empty hostels were renovated and brought in income from the students who settled them. They “forgot” about the house in the village of Garachukhur. The authors of the letter believe that the culprit of this "forgetfulness" is the chair of the commission for the distribution of new apartments, Eldar Zeynalov. Chair of the State Committee is Rovshan Rzayev.

A list of 60 signatories is attached to the letter sent to the Turan agency. All have a warrant to receive apartments in the controversial building. These people appealed to the Presidential Administration, reminding officials of the Article 13th of the Constitution on the inviolability of their own homes, state protection of this right.

In 2019, they appealed to the Surakhani District Court of Baku, which studied all the complaints, issued the same type of resolution: to evict the refugees. Refugees' appeals against the decisions of the Surakhani court were not satisfied. The District Court's decisions were upheld by the Supreme Court. However, the State Service does not fulfill the approbation of court orders, since refugees cannot be left on the street, and the state does not give them new apartments. The legal owners of apartments in kv-l. 4042-4046 Maryam Yusubova, Karim Yasinov, Ramiz Najafov, Mehman Salimov and others Mehman Melikov (house on Bakirli Street) actually continue to live in rented apartments.

In official letters from the State Committee for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, owners of occupied apartments are informed that the problem is known, is “under control”, and the refugees will be evicted when new houses are built for them. In response to the name of Nazim Narimanov, the State Committee reported (2020) that Arzu Aliyeva, a refugee from Aghdam, who seized his apartment (N 103), received a new apartment in the house, pos. Kurdakhany, and it is infused there. However, N. Narimanov cannot move into his apartment as refugee Arzu Aliyeva continues to live there.

In an interview with Turan, the owner of one of the apartments in this house, a veteran of the Karabakh war, Arif Gashimov, said that he fought for the Karabakh people and they made him homeless. He lives with an adult son, who cannot marry because of the tightness in the apartment. According to him, the refugees who seized the house also want to leave there, but for this, the state must give them housing. One of the refugees sometimes pays the owner of the apartment, a woman named Atlas from apartment N152; to help her pay the rent for the apartment she has to live in.

Over the past years, Arif Gashimov met five times with the chair of the state committee Rovshan Rzayev and the head of the State Committee's apparatus Eldar Zeynalov. They promised that they would first vacate the apartments of the eight owners, whose rights were confirmed by the court. However, nothing happens.

"Citizens gather in front of the State Committee for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, who, leaving the building, share what they saw: who they met there, how much bribes they demanded, how much money they gave to the official for promoting his issue. Citizens advise us to solve our problem with money. We want to get our apartments on a legal basis. Surprisingly: in Baku, dozens of prosperous residential buildings, from which residents are forcibly evicted under the guise of a building failure. Our building is unfinished, there is no electricity, gas or water, and the refugees who occupied it are not evicted. Why? The reason is the corruption of the State Committee," said Gashimov.

To publish the official position of the State Committee for Refugees and Forced Migrants, Turan contacted this organization on September 22. They promised to study the letter of citizens and respond within a day. Two days have passed, but there is no answer from the editorial staff of the State Committee.