NG: AZERBAIJANIS THEMSELVES QUESTION THAT CIVILIANS WERE KILLED BY ARMENIANS
PanARMENIAN.Net
05.03.2010 12:08 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Timed to the anniversary of Sumgait pogroms –
massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani Sumgait between 26 and 28
February 1988, Azerbaijan held events in memory of tragic events in
Khojalu of 1992 on 26 February, Sergei Zvyagin wrote in his article
"Khodjalu: truth and fiction" in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
"The very definition of "Khojalu events" of February 1992 is not
correct. During suppression of firing points near the Khojalu
village there were virtually no casualties among civilians in the
village, since they had the opportunity to leave the village via the
corridor created by Karabakh for the unarmed civilian population. The
availability of that corridor never been questioned by observers,
including Azerbaijan.
Nearly a hundred dead residents Khojalu were found at 11-12 km from
the village, on the field between the Armenian village Nakhichevanik,
situated at the administrative border with the former Aghdam region
of Azerbaijan SSR, and the Azerbaijani positions near Aghdam. That
area then was fully controlled by the National Front of Azerbaijan
(NFA), being in opposition to pro-communist President Mutalibov.
Moreover, a day after journalists arrived at this place, including
foreign ones, some people again returned to the field to desecrate
some corpses before the visit of foreign media representatives,"
Zvyagin wrote.
"The massacre in Khojaly can be included in the "track record"
of the Azerbaijani militants," the newspaper wrote. It pursued two
aims: firstly, to remove from the political arena Ayaz Mutalibov,
unnecessary after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and secondly,
to obtain a pretext to start supported by Ankara a noisy campaign on
charging the Armenians in the inhuman methods of warfare.
"Today the promotion of "Khojali project" has different political and
ideological goals, while the means have remained unchanged: the lies
and falsification.
The massacre of Khojalu inhabitants near Aghdam is the same crime of
Azerbaijani national chauvinism, as pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait in
February 1988, in Baku in January 1990, the massacre in the Karabakh
village of Maraga in April 1992.
Unfortunately, these events have not received adequate legal, political
and moral assessment so far that leads to the cynical distortion of
reality in advocacy for official Baku," Sergei Zvyagin said.
The Sumgait pogroms (also known as the Sumgait Massacre or February
Events) was an Azeri-led pogroms of the Armenian population of
Azerbaijani Sumgait from 26 to 29 February 1988. On February 27, 1988,
large mobs made up of Azeris formed into groups that went on to attack
and killed Armenians both on the streets and in their apartments.
Sumgait pogroms lasted three days and were accompanied by widespread
violence, looting and murder. Sumgait events signaled the beginning of
another unprecedented wave of anti-Armenian persecutions and violence
in Azerbaijan, a new genocide. The victims of this of anti-Armenian
persecutions and violence were Armenians of Kirovabad, Kazakhs,
Khanlar, Dashkesan, Mingechaur, Baku and other towns and villages
of Azerbaijan. This has led to floods of refugees from Azerbaijan in
Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia.