IDPs from Zangilan appeal to German ambassador on pollution of Okhchuchay

The IDPs from the Zangilan district appealed to the German Ambassador to Azerbaijan Wolfgang Manig to take action against the German company CRONIMET.

Report presents an appeal.

"We, the IDPs from the Zangilan district, appeal to you regarding the environmental terror committed in our homeland during the Armenian occupation. We have been temporarily settled in different cities and regions of Azerbaijan for about 30 years. We have never lost hope that we will return to our homeland. In September last year, under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev, the glorious Azerbaijani Army liberated our occupied territories, including the Zangilan district, from where we were displaced.

This victory has raised great spirits in each of us, and we look forward to the day when we will soon return to our former places of residence. But we are disappointed that Zangilan has been subjected to environmental terror. The people of Zangilan used the Okhchuchay both for irrigation and recreation, and fishing. Now the toxic wastes of Gajaran copper-molybdenum and Gafan copper refineries located at the source of the river in Armenia and domestic wastewater from these cities are discharged directly into the Okhchuchay without treatment. The German company CRONIMET, which operates in the mining sector in Armenia, does not comply with eco-standards, which leads to the threat of environmental terrorism not only for the Zangilan region but also for the surrounding regions.

The problem makes it impossible to use the river for irrigation, and fish are killed en masse. We, the people of Zangilan, who have been longing for our homeland for almost 30 years, demand an end to this terror committed in our ancestral lands. We call on Germany, a country of environmental standards, to take urgent action against CRONIMET, which has created a dangerous situation for other countries.

We signed this appeal and demanded the immediate termination of CRONIMET. Otherwise, we will appeal to the international courts regarding the organization that committed environmental terrorism and Germany itself.

Notably, more than 100 IDPs, displaced during the occupation of Zangilan by Armenian armed forces, signed the letter.