AzerNews Weekly, Azerbaijan
April 1 2010
Armenian lobby blocked Czech town’s twinning with Khojaly: MP
01-04-2010 06:39:48
The Armenian diaspora in the Czech Republic has prevented the
country’s town of Lidice twinning with Azerbaijan’s Khojaly, a
proposal made due to both towns’ being subjected to massacres, an
Azerbaijani lawmaker said Wednesday.
Gular Ahmadova said the initiative had been put forth by Elshan
Nazarov, a representative of the Azerbaijani community in the Czech
Republic. Azerbaijani MPs had been invited to the event he organized,
and Ahmadova took part in it. Initially, it was announced that a
street in Lidice would be named after Khojaly. However, the Armenian
lobby hampered the materialization of the initiative.
Ahmadova believes the lack of proper organization also contributed to
the failure of the initiative. She said the Azerbaijani community in
the Eastern European country did not make a concerted effort to reach
the goal, and no assistance was sought from the Azerbaijani government
and parliament members. Following the meeting, the lawmakers had
offered their assistance to Nazarov.
`I believe that in a year’s time we will achieve realization of this
initiative,’ Ahmadova added.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war in the early 1990s. On February
25-26, 1992, Armenian forces attacked unarmed civilians in Khojaly
with the support of Russian troops. 613 people were brutally killed,
while 1,275 taken captive, 487 became handicapped and 150 remain
missing. Overall, the war claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced
about one million Azerbaijanis. Armenia has been occupying over 20% of
Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory since then. The
ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but peace talks have been largely
fruitless so far.
Lidice, located just north-west of Prague, is built on the site of a
previous village of the same name which was completely destroyed by
German forces in the spring of 1942. On June 10, 1942, all 192 men
over 16 years of age from the village were murdered on the spot by the
Germans. The rest of the population was sent to Nazi concentration
camps.*