AZERBAIJAN KEEPS ON SPECULATING ON ‘KHOJALU’

ArmInfo
2009-02-16 11:38:00

ArmInfo. The Information Department of the Nagorny Karabakh Republic
Foreign Ministry has disseminated a report on the real events in the
populated area of Khojalu.

ArmInfo special correspondent to Stepanakert presents the report:
‘raditional anti-Armenian campaign related to the incidents of 1992
in the populated area of Khojalu has got underway in Azerbaijan. The
official Azerbaijani propaganda as before takes any possible measure
to lay the responsibility for the tragedy on the Armenian party and to
poison the international and public consciousness with another dose of
armenophobia. In addition, Baku still keeps on disseminating already
exposed false data on the incidents. Thus, last year the NKR Foreign
Ministry drew public attention to the false photo disseminated by some
Azerbaijani websites including on the web page of the authoritative
website in Azerbaijan ‘Heydar Aliyev Fund’ (). The
Ministry highlighted that the propaganda machine of the neighbor
state tries to use alongside with numerous casualties on the photo a
populated area in the background of it. This would give "truthiness"
to Baku’s version on mass killings of Azerbaijanis in Khojalu. In
the meanwhile, the color version of that photo refutes the given
allegation because of the appearance of the killed, their cloths
etc. In reality, the photo is directly relevant to the incidents in
Kosovo. Alongside with many other similar photos it was exhibited
at least on a Serbian, an Alban and a specialized forum, as well
as on the website of The New York Times and others. Nevertheless,
the given evident false photo is still available at many Azerbaijani
websites, which misleads the unaware visitors. Moreover, booklets
containing this false photo are spread across the world. The NKR
Foreign Ministry Information Department mentions that on February
25-26 1992 the Karabakh party organized a military operation to
deblock the only airport in the country located not far from the
populated of Khojalu and to render harmless the firing points of the
rival in Khojalu wherefrom the Azerbaijani OMON agents had regularly
attacked and fired at the populated areas of Karabakh since the spring
of 1991 from multiple launch rocket systems ‘Grad’ (Hail), Alazan and
Crystall rockets. Deblockading of the airport and rendering harmless
the firing points of the rival in Khojalu was of vital importance
for the NKR people.

Subdivisions of the NKR defence forces, that were storming Khojalu,
left a corridor for civilians to leave safely the battle actions zones,
and the Azerbaijani party was informed about it in advance. The NKR
authorities warned the Azerbaijani party about putting down the fire
points of Khojalu in advance, two months before its starting. This
was many times proved by Azerbaijani officials, in particular,
president Ayaz Mutalibov. But Azerbaijani authorities did nothing to
remove civilians from the battle actions zone. Moreover, the column
of civilians was fired near the border to the agdam region, which
later proved by Mutalibov having connected this criminal action with
the attempts of the opposition to withdraw him from the power making
him responsible for the incident. The territory, where the cadres
with numerous bodies of the killed people were photographed later,
is at three kilometers far from the town of agdam and 11 kilometers
far from Khojalu. Up to falling of Agdam in summer 1993 this territory
was always controlled by Azerbaijani forces, which ruled out access
of subdivisions of the Karabakh army there. Some details of this
military operation are still enveloped in mystery and official
Baku has been actively speculating with it to reach its political
goals. Incidentally, the whole propaganda has bright anti-Armenian
insinuations and is used to tighten ethnic intolerance and dislike to
Armenians among Azerbaijanis. We have to confess with regret that the
topic of "Khojalu" still remains the keystone of Azerbaijani internal
and external informational, to be correct, disinformational policy
in the context of the Karabakh conflict in general".’