ARMENIANS DID NOT INTEND TO OCCUPY THEIR OWN TERRITORIES

STEPANAKERT, APRIL 14. ARMINFO. “As a man who was born in Shushi and
has for many years studied the inscriptions on the town’s historical
architectural monuments and graves of XVIII-XX I can say with full
responsibility that Armenians and Russians constituted the greater
part of the town’s population at that time,” says Karabakh
ethnographer Hrachik Haroutyunyan commenting on the article in
GazetaSNG.ru saying that the ancestors of the Azeris lived in Karabakh
as long ago as paleolith.

In the article Azeris protest against some alleged excavations in
Shushi aimed, as they claim, “at wiping out the Azeri trace in
Karabakh.” “The goal of the Karabakh occupying Armenians is to create
an artificial Armenian history of this land,” says the article. Azeri
professor Hidayat Jafarov says that the excavations show that the
Armenians are going to occupy Karabakh in archaeological terms too.

Haroutyunyan assures that the inscriptions on over 1,000 graves in
Shushi show that all the top positions in the town in XVIII-XX were
held by Armenians and Russians. “So we, Armenians, did not plan to
occupy our own territory and Jafarov’s statement is one more
propaganda trick,” he says reminding that journalist Israfil Mamedov
said on Baku radio recently that they should write Shushi’s
history. “Now we have no real history and each of us should be
concerned for this,” Mamedov said. “Wasn’t he in fact calling for
rewriting the history of the Armenian land in Azeri manner?”
Haroutyunyan concludes.