UN SECRETARY GENERAL INFORMED OF MASSACRE OF ARMENIAN POPULATION IN AZERBAIJAN

ArmInfo
2010-02-24 12:14:00

ArmInfo. The Armenian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in
the person of Head of the Mission, Ambassador Karen Nazaryan, has
disseminated a letter addressed to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
on occasion of the anniversary of the tragic incidents in Sumgait
and Baku.

Armenian Foreign Ministry told ArmInfo the letter particularly says:
"Azerbaijan keeps on presenting itself as a so-called victim of
"Armenian aggression" distorting not only the incidents known to the
world but also the evidences by Azerbaijani sources of those years."

Ambassador Nazaryan quoted the well-known interview with ex-president
of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov telling about the incidents in Khojali
when the opposition of Azerbaijan and militia created obstacles
to evacuation of the peaceful population from the zone of military
actions via the gorge. The opposition hoped for coming to power in
Baku through massacre of its compatriots.

The letter also refers to the report by The Helsinki Watch dated
September 1992 which brings evidences by Azerbaijanis saying that
Azerbaijani militia fired at the retreating civilians.Nazaryan’s letter
also says that the world community has repeatedly given evidences
and confirmed numerous barbarities by the Azerbaijani government
with respect to the helpless Armenian population. "In response to the
peaceful and constitutional requirement of the NKR people to exercise
their rights to self-determination, the Azerbaijani authorities armed
the crowd which committed pogroms of the Armenians in Sumgait in
1988. Those pogroms have become the first case of massacre in the
territory of the Soviet Union, which was registered in judicial
cases. Just after gaining independence, Azerbaijan released the
convicted murderers and declared them national heroes. The report by
The Helsinki Watch indicates that those incidents aimed to frighten
the Armenians living in other regions of Azerbaijan. The pogroms
in 1988-1991 in Gandzak and other towns of Azerbaijan were even
more barbarous and led to ethnic extermination and displacement of
over half a million of Armenians. Those barbarities were followed
by unprecedented offensive actions by the Azerbaijani armed forces
directed to extermination of the NKR population", the letter says.

The letter was sent also to the UN Security Council and General
Assembly. The Ambassador has drawn attention of the Organization
to the fact that it was Azerbaijan that unleashed armed aggression
against Nagorny Karabakh. Armenia is sure that the best decision in
such situation is restoration and exercising of the Nagorny Karabakh
people’s legal right to self-determination, the Ambassador concluded.