Recalling Khojaly

 

Author: VK

 

Last week Azerbaijan recalled the people killed in Khojaly. 21 years ago 613 people were killed there as a result of the actions by armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

At the memorial evening in  Moscow Leyla Aliyeva, vice-president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, called the Khojaly tragedy one of the most bloody and terrible pages of the Karabakh conflict: “The atrocities that took place that night in February 1992 should be legally and morally assessed by the international community. That is why on May 8, 2008, we initiated an international campaign "Justice for Khojaly", which aims to alert the international community about the tragedy. Since the beginning of the campaign it was signed by more than 700,000 people, 150 thousand of them signed it on our website - http://justiceforkhojaly.org. As you know, for many years the Heydar Aliyev Foundation has been holding events dedicated to this tragedy in more than 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America: memorial evenings, conferences, exhibitions; publishes books and a variety of printed materials, it also makes films. As part of our campaign, seminars and pickets outside parliaments and government agencies around the world are held. With the help of this campaign, the Khojaly tragedy has already been recognized by several international forums. At the initiative of the OIC Youth Forum, parliamentarians from 51 countries have recognized the Khojaly tragedy as a crime against humanity. We want all the world to know about Khojaly, and we will do our best for this. I would like to say that to date we have collected more than 500 million signatures. I want to say that currently the parliaments of Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia and the Czech Republic have recognized the Khojaly tragedy as genocide and crimes against Azerbaijan. Six states in the U.S. have recognized the genocide. We will continue to work in this direction, a lot more is to be done, and I believe that soon many more countries will recognize the genocide, and the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will have a fair resolution”,

 

“Certainly, this tragedy, which took place in the course of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, for the rest of our lives and as long as the people of Azerbaijan exist, will remind us of the fatal mistakes that were made, and about the events that occurred in the history of Azerbaijan, in the contemporary history of Azerbaijan”, Polad Bulbuloglu, ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Russia, said. “These days are in the past, they have become history, but all of us have to come to  conclusions from these historic days. I must say that the next generation of Azerbaijanis, who now enjoy all the new technologies available in the world... The campaign "Justice for Khojaly", which is gaining strength with every month, every year was initiated by young Azerbaijanis, and I, as a representative of the older generation, would like to thank them a lot. Perhaps it should be like that: the things that we failed or have not managed to accomplish have to be finished by the young, those who follow us. I hope that a time will come when the whole world will recognize the terrible events of the genocide against the Azerbaijani people. To all the Azerbaijanis living today, I would like to say that it is our duty and the duty of future generations to never forget what happened, so that at least nowhere else in the world will such tragedies take place again…

The great Caucasian poet Rasul Gamzatov said: "If shoot a gun at the past, the future will shoot a cannon at you." If we forget or pass by the events that took place in Khojaly, these events will take place again and again. There is a phrase: "If you ask for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for you." If we all pretend that nothing has happened, it will take place with other peoples, less numerous and more numerous, that exist in the world, because, unfortunately, conflicts do not end, but even conflicts should be resolved in a civilized manner, and medieval cruelty is prohibited for anyone, therefore a legal assessment should be made. A legal assessment can be reached through awareness, through bringing the truth to other countries, to other people who live on Earth”.

 

“For 20 years this great tragedy has remained in the heart of every Azerbaijani as the death of loved ones, parents”, Mamed Aliyev, President of the International Azerbaijani Congress, said. “The death of the older generation is natural, when the children bury their parents. And when it happens to children, and you have seen how many children have been killed, it is impossible to forget. So I think that as long as we are alive, even if a positive solution is found to the problem, the pain will leave scars in our hearts. Our duty as men is not to become stale, not to become depressed, but with the help of our actions and reasonable behaviour to bring to the public, in particular of us, Muscovites, the Russian representatives of Azerbaijan, to bring to our friends, to convey the horrors that happened to the Azerbaijani people. Thanks to the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the great work conducted by the President of Azerbaijan, the president of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Mehriban Khanum and, of course, Leila Khanum as vice president of the Foundation, I think it is becoming global. Young people, and not only young people, but the entire Russian Azerbaijani Diaspora, certainly feels attention to itself, and we agree regarding this issue. We may disagree on many things, but in particular regarding this tragedy, the Karabakh events, I think, that every Azerbaijani should be guided by the actions of the President of Azerbaijan in expressing his opinion on it”.

 

“I had to talk to all the Karabakh residents, on both sides of the front line”, Alexander Volokhov, former military commander of Fizuli, said. “As you know, by that time both sides were starting to become tired. When we met for a meeting with representatives of the Karabakh Armenians and the Azeris in one room, who had not seen each other for several years, they cried and asked: "Who pushed us into this war, into this bloody mess? Let us go back to the way we used to live, after all, we ate from the same cup, we celebrated the same weddings. How is it that we are now killing each other?" But we all know that they did not decide the question of whether they were going to live or not to live.

Amazing, beautiful women Mekhriban and Leila, they are doing such things for the memory of Karabakh, for the memory of Khojaly. You know that war is only going to kill and a media war will simply destroy any memory. So, to avoid defeat in this war, so that the memory is passed on to our children, to keep in their hearts the pain of Khojaly and Karabakh, so that they struggle to return to their native land, so that children's voices are heard again in Khojaly, we need to pass the baton of memory to the young people”.