EMBASSY MAGAZINE: AZERBAIJAN CONTINUES LOOKING FOR SCAPEGOATS IN KHOJALU FIASCO

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.03.2010 13:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Embassy Magazine famous Canadian newspaper published
an article titled, "Azerbaijan Continues Looking for Scapegoats in
the Khojalu Fiasco".

"Karabakh, heart of Armenia, was inexplicably snatched from Armenia
in a sinister stroke of the pen by Joseph Stalin and placed under the
jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan as an "autonomous province": a game
of political expediency by the newly established Soviet authorities
in the early 1920s to gain favours from the newly emerging Turkey
and extend Soviet inference among its Turkic neighbours.

Karabakh, which was 90% Armenian-populated, never ceased complaining
to the Central authorities in Moscow and expressing dissatisfaction
over Azeri treatment, and continued lobbying for realization of its
aspirations to be part of the motherland, Armenia.

Hundreds of thousands Armenians demonstrated in 1988 urging the
Kremlin for action and the return of Karabakh to its rightful owner,
Armenia. In response, the slaughter of Armenians was unleashed in
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and continued for a week before
Soviet troops were brought in to end the violence. Baku was emptied
of its 250.000 Armenians, an industrious and loyal minority. Similar
massacres of cleansing were organized in the Azeri cities of Sumgait
and Kirovabad and later in the Shahumian district of Karabakh. As the
Soviet Union disintegrated, fighting erupted all over Karabakh. It
was a superhuman struggle of life and death for Armenians again in
the belief that force cannot constitute the basis of rights.

As the fighting continued, the Azeris started creating myths in order
to rationalize their defeat. The most sordid of these fictitious
scenarios was one about Khojalu.

Eighteen years have passed since the alleged February 26 Khojalu
massacres. Today, Baku tries to use those events to conceal the
pogroms that took place in Sumgait during February 1988 and other
cities thereafter," the article stated.

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.