LETTER to EDITOR
The Milford Daily News
In February some Azerbaijani American community leaders ask public officials to sign Khojaly Remembrance Day proclamations. They are generally inaccurate and victimize those who have suffered persecution and genocide by Turkey and Azerbaijan. The mayor of Portland, Maine, agreed to a request made by the president of the Azerbaijani Society of Maine to issue a Remember Khojaly Day proclamation. Additionally, the Maine Holocaust and Human Rights Center (HHRC) cosponsored this matter. There may be similar instances across the U.S. and the globe.
Also, in February, Armenian American communities remember the victims of Azerbaijani pogroms in Sumgait and other massacres in Kirovabad, Maragha and Baku.
According to its website the HHRC was founded in 1985, the HHRC uses the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust and other genocides to combat prejudice and discrimination in Maine and beyond. We encourage individuals and communities to reflect and act upon their ethical and moral responsibilities in the modern world.
This is mind boggling as it seems they make their own set of rules. Having reached out to the acting director of HHRC, it is unfathomable that he could not comprehend the emotions of Armenians. It is also questionable that a human rights center would collaborate with the Azerbaijani government unless the intent is to antagonize. What kind of human rights group aids an unrepentant, world-recognized genocidal tyrannical government?
The proclamation requests misrepresent the Khojaly Massacre and wrongly accused Armenians of genocide when in fact they may be defending themselves as do others. While Turkey and Azerbaijan refuse to recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1.5 million souls and continue an ongoing extermination and disinformation campaign.
While most public officials are probably unaware of this tragic history; Americans are being manipulated to advance a misinformation campaign orchestrated by the Azerbaijani government and their proxies that include HHRC and its supporters.
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Everyone should be sympathetic with the loss of innocent Azerbaijani life in an active war as others died too. However, the misinformation campaign about Khojaly creates a false equivalency with the Armenian genocide where 1.5 million Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Aramaen and Maronite Christians were systematically murdered in brutal and barbaric fashion. Proclamations that cite Khojaly a genocide trivializes the Holocaust and other real genocides such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and Myanmar.
Rather than request Khojaly proclamations, Azerbaijani community leaders in the United States could reaffirm U.S. House Resolution 296 and Senate Resolution 150, which officially commemorate the Armenian genocide and reject efforts to deny it. This would help promote reconciliation if they are sincerely interested.
Although human right belongs to all people, it is a problem when there is revisionism, distortion of fact and basically deceiving. It is highly disturbing when the matter is unabashedly supported by HHRC. Why this group can endorse any such vile effort must have a sinister ulterior motive, when they of all people should know truth from fiction.
Martin Demoorjian
Marlborough
