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WOUNDS OF THE PAST: EXPERTS IN YEREVAN SAY AZERI CAMPAIGN ON KHOJALU DESIGNED TO OVERSHADOW MASSACRES OF ARMENIANS
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow
28.02.12 | 11:50
A monument in Yerevan commemorating the victims of Sumgait massacres
Armenia is losing in the information war with Azerbaijan, experts
warn, pointing to the Azeri-organized festival of films on the Khojalu
events recently shown in more than 50 countries, as well anti-Armenian
protests and conferences on the same subject in Istanbul, Paris and
Washington prior to the festival.
"The Azeri propaganda machine has been leading in an information
war and succeeding because there is no adequate counterattack,"
says Bakur Karapetyan, head of the Shoushi foundation.
Karapetyan believes that the "myth of Khojalu" was made up by the Azeri
authorities to veil and cast shadow to conceal the February 27 events
of 24 years ago, when Armenians suffered three days of pogroms in the
town of Sumgait (20 km from Baku) and the massacre in the village of
Maragha, a village in Nagorno-Karabakh that is now under Azeri control.
Fifty-three people were brutally murdered in Sumgait, hundreds were
wounded and narrowly escaped death, the death-toll in Maragha reached
80-100 and 64 were taken hostage.
The Shoushi Foundation is planning to turn to the International
Criminal Court in the Hague regarding the Khojalu case, because it
says there are numerous documented facts proving that in 1992 the
Armenian troops had opened a humanitarian corridor for the civilians
of Khojalu before the attack, but they were later killed by their
own compatriots far from the Armenian positions.
Even Ayaz Mutallibov, who was the president of Azerbaijan in the
1990s, confirmed that the humanitarian corridor had really been
provided, and it is for voicing that very truth as well as the fact
that innocent people of Khojalu were massacred by Azeri soldiers that
Realny Azerbaijan newspaper chief editor Eylnulla Fatullayev was sent
to prison in Azerbaijan.
In an article titled "Karabakh Diary" published in 2005 Fatullayev
wrote: "Several days before the attack Armenians were repeatedly
announcing through loudspeakers a warning message about the planned
mission, and were asking to leave the place and exit the blockade
through the humanitarian corridor opened for them along the Karkar
river. People of Khojalu themselves say that they did use the corridor
and that the Armenian soldiers positioned there did not open fire
on them."
President Mutalibov whose successor was Heydar Aliyev, said in an
interview a decade after his tenure: "It is obvious that the execution
of Khojalu residents was organized by someone to achieve a coup d'etat
in Azerbaijan."
Another Azeri journalist and political analyst Elmar Huseynov was shot
dead in front of his house in Baku in 2005; he had repeatedly written
that people of Khojalu who were mostly re-settled Meskhetian Turks,
became victims of Azeri domestic political issues.
The Monitor journal founded by Huseynov wrote on the 6th anniversary
of Heydar Aliyev's death: "They say one should either speak positively
of a deceased person or not speak at all. As even if granted a huge
desire to do so it's impossible to say anything positive about Heydar
Aliyev, we'd better follow the tradition and keep silence... hence we
will not tell about the massacre of Khojalu he had arranged neither
of the military revolution".
While in Baku people presenting facts and opinions breaching the state
propaganda are silenced, there are solid concerns in Armenia that it
is going to be harder and harder by each passing day to prove what
really happened there.
"We are terribly late; of course there functions the president-adjacent
Public Relations and Information Center which has produced a fair
amount of documentaries accurately stating the events of Sumgait,
Maragha and Khojalu, but it's too late considering the preceding 15
years of inertness. It's going to take double efforts, otherwise if
parliaments of other countries following Pakistan's and Mexico's
examples recognized "Khojalu genocide", we will lose not only the
information war, but Karabakh as well," says political analyst
Alexander Manaseryan.
By Gayane Abrahamyan
ArmeniaNow
28.02.12 | 11:50
A monument in Yerevan commemorating the victims of Sumgait massacres
Armenia is losing in the information war with Azerbaijan, experts
warn, pointing to the Azeri-organized festival of films on the Khojalu
events recently shown in more than 50 countries, as well anti-Armenian
protests and conferences on the same subject in Istanbul, Paris and
Washington prior to the festival.
"The Azeri propaganda machine has been leading in an information
war and succeeding because there is no adequate counterattack,"
says Bakur Karapetyan, head of the Shoushi foundation.
Karapetyan believes that the "myth of Khojalu" was made up by the Azeri
authorities to veil and cast shadow to conceal the February 27 events
of 24 years ago, when Armenians suffered three days of pogroms in the
town of Sumgait (20 km from Baku) and the massacre in the village of
Maragha, a village in Nagorno-Karabakh that is now under Azeri control.
Fifty-three people were brutally murdered in Sumgait, hundreds were
wounded and narrowly escaped death, the death-toll in Maragha reached
80-100 and 64 were taken hostage.
The Shoushi Foundation is planning to turn to the International
Criminal Court in the Hague regarding the Khojalu case, because it
says there are numerous documented facts proving that in 1992 the
Armenian troops had opened a humanitarian corridor for the civilians
of Khojalu before the attack, but they were later killed by their
own compatriots far from the Armenian positions.
Even Ayaz Mutallibov, who was the president of Azerbaijan in the
1990s, confirmed that the humanitarian corridor had really been
provided, and it is for voicing that very truth as well as the fact
that innocent people of Khojalu were massacred by Azeri soldiers that
Realny Azerbaijan newspaper chief editor Eylnulla Fatullayev was sent
to prison in Azerbaijan.
In an article titled "Karabakh Diary" published in 2005 Fatullayev
wrote: "Several days before the attack Armenians were repeatedly
announcing through loudspeakers a warning message about the planned
mission, and were asking to leave the place and exit the blockade
through the humanitarian corridor opened for them along the Karkar
river. People of Khojalu themselves say that they did use the corridor
and that the Armenian soldiers positioned there did not open fire
on them."
President Mutalibov whose successor was Heydar Aliyev, said in an
interview a decade after his tenure: "It is obvious that the execution
of Khojalu residents was organized by someone to achieve a coup d'etat
in Azerbaijan."
Another Azeri journalist and political analyst Elmar Huseynov was shot
dead in front of his house in Baku in 2005; he had repeatedly written
that people of Khojalu who were mostly re-settled Meskhetian Turks,
became victims of Azeri domestic political issues.
The Monitor journal founded by Huseynov wrote on the 6th anniversary
of Heydar Aliyev's death: "They say one should either speak positively
of a deceased person or not speak at all. As even if granted a huge
desire to do so it's impossible to say anything positive about Heydar
Aliyev, we'd better follow the tradition and keep silence... hence we
will not tell about the massacre of Khojalu he had arranged neither
of the military revolution".
While in Baku people presenting facts and opinions breaching the state
propaganda are silenced, there are solid concerns in Armenia that it
is going to be harder and harder by each passing day to prove what
really happened there.
"We are terribly late; of course there functions the president-adjacent
Public Relations and Information Center which has produced a fair
amount of documentaries accurately stating the events of Sumgait,
Maragha and Khojalu, but it's too late considering the preceding 15
years of inertness. It's going to take double efforts, otherwise if
parliaments of other countries following Pakistan's and Mexico's
examples recognized "Khojalu genocide", we will lose not only the
information war, but Karabakh as well," says political analyst
Alexander Manaseryan.