FARKHAD BADALBEILI: “WE NEED CONTACTS BETWEEN REASONABLE ARMENIAN AND AZERBAIJANI INTELLECTUALS”

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
March 5 2015

5 March 2015 – 3:59pm

Interview by Vestnik Kavkaza

A commemorative event took place in Moscow devoted to the tragic events
in Khojaly, which happened 23 years ago. A goal of the event was not
only commemoration of victims of the tragedy, but also to warn about
and prevent such tragedies in the future. After the official ceremony,
a concert was held. The world-known pianist and composer Farkhad
Badalbeili participated in the concert. Vestnik Kavkaza managed to
talk to the maestro ahead of the concert.

– Is it possible to prevent such a tragedy as the Khojaly one in the
world today?

– Unfortunately, the tragedy of Khojaly happened, and the world
knows such examples. Oradour in France, Khatyn in Belarus, Ma”¹ Lai
in Vietnam. Human cruelty shows itself in awful forms, especially
during war. I’ve read that yesterday in Germany a 94-year-old man was
arrested for his crimes in Auschwitz. It means that crimes against
humanity have no duration. Sooner or later, the people who committed
crimes in Khojaly will be punished.

I want to say that criminals have no nationalities. A criminal is a
criminal. It could be an American, a French, or a civilized German.

Criminals should be punished. Justice for Khojaly calls us not to
forget about victims. Criminals should be fairly punished. Justice
should win.

I don’t want to shed blood. I try to build contacts between normal
reasonable Armenian and Azerbaijani intellectuals. We have organized
mutual visits together with Polad Byul-Byul Ogly.

Criminals who are sitting in top governmental posts today should be
fairly punished. Nations shouldn’t cultivate hatred for each other,
they should encourage each other and remember about cruelty and
realize that violence and revenge will lead nowhere. We should learn
to live together.

– What conclusions should be drawn from the events?

– The conclusion is obvious: war is not a way to make relations clear.

This is confirmed by the recent developments in Ukraine and the
senseless deaths of many people.

Today we will play mourning music by Alexander Tchaikovsky. He is
a wonderful, well-known composer, a People’s Artist of Russia. He
composed a beautiful work, which we played in Gabala at our festival.

And today we will play it in Moscow. Real intellectuals – Russians,
Belarusians, Georgians, representatives of other nations – realize
that mutual destruction is senseless. It is a path to nowhere.