Germany demands justice for Khojaly

Orkhan Sattarov, head of the European Bureau of Vestnik Kavkaza

Azerbaijan is marking one of the most tragic dates in its history. On February 26th, 1992, nationalist Armenian groups destroyed the town of Khojaly in Nagorno-Karabakh. Victims of the tragedy were 613 people, including women, children, old people. Eight families were completely eliminated. 22 years have passed since the tragedy. A new generation grew up in the country. But the pain still hurts. And this is a case when time doesn’t heal. Photos of the massacre made by Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev are the same for Azerbaijan as Khatyn for Belarus and Guernica for Spain. The only difference is that the world knows a lot about Khatyn and Guernica, while destroyed Khojaly remained “an Azerbaijani tragedy” for a long time. People didn’t know about it abroad. Probably that is why the Azerbaijanis strive to tell the international community truthful information about the events in Khojaly. They are driven not by politics or revenge, but a desire to restore justice and tell about the tragedy of the people who had lived for centuries and were destroyed in a single night.

The Azerbaijanis living in Berlin organize meetings near the Brandenburg Gates annually. Similar acts take place in other cities of Germany. Diaspora organizations, Azerbaijani students studying in Germany and private activists recall the tragedy of Khojaly. People hand around flyers and pamphlets containing information on the Khojaly tragedy; some organizations try to use the German media.

Today German society knows about the massacre in Khojaly, which is considered the biggest tragedy of the Karabakh war. “The slaughter in Khojaly should be assessed as a hard military crime,” MP Catherine Werner and MP Annette Grot believe.

“The Khojaly massacre became a tragic and violent end of the long conflict history between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The slaughter of peaceful citizens cannot be justified. Armenia violated the international legal norms of conducting a war. This war cannot be ignored and underestimated anymore; it is a historic fact. Peace can be achieved only through admitting your guilt,” Catherine Werner thinks.

Annette Grot stated that it is not enough to admit the fact of the crime. “First of all, conclusions should be made to prevent such events in the future. The guilty must be punished. It is inhumane cynicism when members of armed groups of the past boast of killing this or that number of Muslim men and women,” Grot emphasized.

The parliamentary state secretary of the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, Christian Smidt, called Khojaly “a tragedy of humanity.” The former MP Eduard Osvald stated in 2012 that overcoming the Khojaly issue “would demand efforts of generations.”