On July 19, 2021, the Azerbaijani servicemen violated, with their criminal acts, the rights of the residents of Tegh community of Syunik Province of the Republic of Armenia (RA). Armenian Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan wrote about this on Facebook.

"In particular, on the basis of complaints and reports, the fact-finding work of the RA Human Rights Defender has revealed the following:

First, it turned out that one of the residents of Tegh village of Syunik Province had done agricultural work on July 19, 2021, between 10-10:30 in the morning, on the land owned by him and his family on ownership rights based on legal documents. In particular, he harvested grain with a combine.

The land of the mentioned resident of Tegh village is located in the immediate vicinity of the positions of the Azerbaijani armed forces. Despite that, for the sake of completeness of the work, the combine operator had to collect the wheat in the border parts of the land as well.

When the combine operator finished the work in one of the border sections and was at a distance of about 150 meters from that place to the depths of the RA territory, he noticed that a number of Azerbaijani armed servicemen were approaching him. Approaching, the Azerbaijani servicemen threatened the resident of Tegh village with a weapon, shouted and dragged him, tried to mandatorily move him and the combine toward their positions.

The fact-finding works confirm that the servicemen of the Azerbaijani armed forces have in fact illegally deprived of liberty a resident of a village in the RA Syunik Province, a combine harvester who is harvesting grain with a combine harvester on the land owned by him by ownership rights, have hindered the implementation of agricultural work for a long time

The combine operator immediately called the head of the Tegh community. After that, thanks to the efforts of the community leader, the RA Armed Forces and the command staff of the local Russian border troops, the combine and the combine operator were returned to the Armenian side at around 16:30 on July 19.

The Human Rights Defender will provide objective evidence of the incident in question, including to international intergovernmental bodies.

The fact-finding work of the Human Rights Defender also revealed that in addition to the mentioned incident, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired shots on the night of July 19-20, 2021 in the immediate vicinity of Khnatsakh and Aravus villages of Tegh community, disturbing the peace and peaceful life of the villagers. The shooting stopped only as a result of preventive firing of the RA Armed Forces protecting the civilian population.

All the mentioned information was confirmed by the head of the Tegh enlarged community, confirmed by the testimonies of the residents, media publications, as well as the official statement of the RA Ministry of Defense on the July 19 incident.

The RA Human Rights Defender specifically states that the above-mentioned criminal acts of the Azerbaijani armed forces, which grossly violate the rights of the RA civilians, should be viewed in a single intention.

This is confirmed also amid the shootings that the Azerbaijani armed forces continue to provoke in other RA border sectors, in the vicinity of civilian settlements and deliberately disrupting the peaceful life of the border population, violating their rights (life and health, property and mental immunity and other vital rights)," Tatoyan added.