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PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday 11 March 2009
Contact : Varténie ECHO
Tel. / Fax. : +32 (0) 2 732 70 27

FIASCO FOR THE AZERI PROPAGANDA IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

– The anti-Armenian Pogroms in Sumgait were evoked at the Azerbaijani
commemoration of Khojalu

– The ambassador of Azerbaijan prohibited to speak

The `commemoration’ of the Khojalu events that was for Azerbaijan the
pinnacle moment of its ongoing misinformation campaign turned to a
fiasco on Tuesday, March 3, 2009, in the European Parliament.

Alerted by the European Armenian Federation and other voices of
European public opinion, the MEP Mrs. Gisela Kallenbach (Greens,
Germany) which initially had sponsored the exhibition of the `Aliev
Foundation’, became aware that she was the object of the Azeri attempt
of manipulation. Consequently, she surprised the participants,
primarily the Azeris by declaring that she was there only `because it
was too late to cancel the exhibition’.

In her inaugural speech, Gisela Kallenbach did not hesitate to say that
she regretted that the exhibition did not include pictures of the
anti-Armenian pogrom that was committed in the Azerbaijani city of
Sumgait in 1988, before taking one minute of silence in memory of the
victims of all the conflicts of the South Caucasus. She criticised
implicitly the Azeri attempt of misinformation and stated that she
learnt that this exhibition `could be used in order to destroy the
promising and recent process of reconciliation between Armenia and
Azerbaijan’ and `that was absolutely not’ her intention.

The short speech that Mrs. Kallenbach delivered on this occasion is
available here.

Mrs. Kallenbach quickly put an end to her participation while the
ambassador of Azerbaijan was prevented from expressing himself and
distributing his false propaganda.

According to various sources, Mrs. Kallenbach had been deceived by
officers of her political group directly financed by the Aliev
Foundation.

`We congratulate Mrs. Kallenbach for her courage and her perspicacity’
declared Hilda Tchoboian, the chairperson of the European Armenian
Federation; `it is clear that the commemorations of Khojalu organized
everywhere in Europe and in the United States form part of the
political warmongering of the leaders of Azerbaijan; they aim to
prevent the settlement of the conflict by prohibiting any concession to
its public opinion, while masking its own crimes’ she continued.

Within the framework of a worldwide campaign of disinfor
mation, the
Baku regime intends to make the international institutions acknowledge
that the events which would have occurred in Khojalu in 1992 at the
time of Artsakh liberation war (formerly Nagorno Karabakh) would have
constituted war crimes ` even a `genocide’. These events ` presented as
such using photos taken in Kosovo were never clarified but several
sources ` in particular Azeri ` tend to prove that they would have been
caused by the Aliev clan to destabilize the Azeri regime of Mutalibov
which was at that time in power.

The massacres and pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku and Kirovabad,
recalled by Mrs. Kallenbach, are on the other hand, attested as having
constituted the response of Azerbaijan to the peaceful process by which
the Armenian populations of Karabakh had requested their unification to
Armenia, in accordance with the Soviet constitution which was into
force at that time. These pogroms caused the Artsakh liberation war to
begin.

At that time, the European Parliament strongly criticised the actions
of Azerbaijan towards its Armenian population, pointing out `the
blockade and the aggression of Azerbaijan’, `the 300,000 Armenian
refugees who fled the pogroms’, the murders of Armenians perpetrated
`in horrific circumstances’, `the economic blockade of Armenia’, `the
unprecedented attack against the Armenians of Karabakh’ and
their
`right to self-determination’.

These resolutions of the European Parliament are available on the
European Armenian Federation website.

`Taking into consideration the serious incriminations that the
European Parliament and the International community charged against
Azerbaijan, for the first time, the machine of Azeri misinformation
failed to use the European Assembly as a springboard to spread its
falsified interpretation of the history’ commented Hilda Tchoboian.

`The abusive exploitation by Azerbaijan of the Karabakh conflict to
justify the warmongering and racist speech of his leaders towards
Armenia and the Armenians, will have to be condemned by the European
Union which carries a real interest with the establishment of a durable
peace in the area’ continued the Chair of the European Armenian
Federation.

The European Armenian Federation recalls that for several years, the
Azeri power has tried repeatedly to discredit the OSCE Minsk group who
is in charge of the peace negotiations in order to move their
framework. In spite of these attempts, the European Parliament
constantly affirmed its confidence in the Minsk group which takes into
account the right to self-determination of the Karabakh people in
compliance with the principles of the International law.