Events in Khojaly According to Azerbaijani Sources: An Armenian Response

During a discussion of the issue "On the Violation of Human Rights and Main Freedoms throughout the World" at the 57th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Azerbaijani delegation made a statement about the events in Khojaly from 1992. The Armenian delegation submitted to the Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights information on the actual events of February 1992, which was presented as an official document.

The following is the text of the document:
For nine years after the events in Khojaly, official Baku has been obstinately fanning anti-Armenian hysteria with the aim of falsifying real events and discrediting the Armenian people in the eyes of the international community.

The events in Khojaly, which led to the deaths of civilians, were solely the result of political intrigue and a struggle for power in Azerbaijan.

The real reasons are most convincingly reflected in the accounts of the Azerbaijanis themselves--as participants in and eyewitnesses of what happened--as well as of those who know the entire story of the internal politics in Baku.

According to the Azerbaijani journalist M. Safarogly, "Khojaly occupied an important strategic position. The loss of Khojaly was a political fiasco for Mutalibov" (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 1993).

Khojaly, along with Shushi and Aghdam, was one of the main strongholds from which Stepanakert, the capital of the Nagorno Karabagh Republic, was shelled continuously and mercilessly for three winter months with artillery, missiles, and launchers used for targeting cities. Disabling the weapons based in Khojaly and freeing the airport were the only way for the inhabitants of the Nagorno Karabagh Republic to ensure the physical survival of a population condemned by Azerbaijan to complete annihilation. The daily shelling of Stepanakert from nearby Khojaly took the lives of many peaceful Armenian civilians--including women, children, and elderly inhabitants of the city.

The former President of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, emphasized that "the assault on Khojaly was not a surprise attack" (Ogonek, No. 14-15, 1992). In an interview he stated that "a corridor was kept open by the Armenians for people to leave" (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 1992). However, a column of civilians was fired upon by armed units of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan on the border of the Aghdam district. This fact was later confirmed by Mutalibov, who linked this criminal act to attempts by the opposition to remove him from power, and he blamed the Azerbaijani opposition entirely for this action. In a recent interview, Mutalibov confirmed his statement of nine years ago, that "the shooting of the Khojaly residents was obviously organized by someone to take control in Azerbaijan" (Novoye Vremya, March 6, 2001).

Similar comments and views concerning the events in Khojaly were also made by several other highly-placed Azerbaijani officials and journalists.

There is, moreover, the conclusion of the Azerbaijani journalist Arif Yunusov, who wrote, "The town and its inhabitants were deliberately sacrificed for a political purpose--to prevent the Popular Front of Azerbaijan from coming to power" (Zerkalo, July 1992). In this case, the Azerbaijanis themselves are named as the perpetrators of the tragedy.

What resulted from the betrayal of the inhabitants of Khojaly by their own highly-placed countrymen is well known. Nevertheless, Azerbaijani propaganda has announced the "atrocities of the Armenians" to the world, supplying television stations with horrendous pictures of a field strewn with mutilated bodies. Khojaly is claimed to have been the "Armenians' revenge" for the Sumgait pogroms.
Tamerlan Karayev, a former Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan Republic, said "The tragedy was committed by the authorities of Azerbaijan," and specifically by "someone highly-placed" (Mukhalifat, April 28, 1992).

The Czech journalist Jana Mazalova, who by an oversight of the Azerbaijanis was included in two groups of press representatives to be shown the "bodies mutilated by the Armenians," noted a substantial difference during her two visits. When she went to the scene immediately after the events, Mazalova did not see any traces of barbarous treatment of the bodies. Yet a couple of days later the journalists were shown disfigured bodies "prepared" for photographs.

Who killed the peaceful inhabitants of Khojaly and then mutilated their bodies, if the tragedy occurred not in a village taken by Armenians or on the route of the humanitarian corridor, but on the approaches to the town of Aghdam, on territory fully controlled by the Popular Front of Azerbaijan? The independent Azerbaijani cameraman Chingiz Mustafayev, who took pictures on February 28 and March 2, 1992, had doubts about the official Azerbaijani version and began his own inquiry. The journalist's very first report to the Moscow news agency D-Press on the possible complicity of the Azerbaijani side in the crimes cost Mustafayev his life. He was killed not far from Aghdam, under circumstances that are still unexplained.

The current President of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, himself recognized that Azerbaijan's "former leadership was also guilty" of the events in Khojaly. According to the Bilik-Dunyasy news agency, in April 1992 he commented, "The bloodshed will be to our advantage. We should not interfere in the course of events." To whose "advantage" was the bloodshed is clear. Megapolis-Express wrote, "It cannot be denied that if the Popular Front of Azerbaijan actually set far-reaching objectives, they have been achieved. Mutalibov has been compromised and overthrown, public opinion worldwide has been shaken, and the Azerbaijanis and their Turkish brethren have believed in the so-called 'genocide of the Azerbaijani people in Khojaly'" (Megapolis-Express, No. 17, 1992).

One other tragic detail is worth noting. It has become known since then that 47 Armenian hostages were being held on February 26 in Khojaly, a fact that the Azerbaijani mass media covering the tragedy failed to mention. After the liberation of Khojaly, only 13 hostages--including six women and one child--were found there, the other 34 having been taken away by the Azerbaijanis to an unknown location. The only thing known about them is that they were led from the village on the night of the operation, but never reached Aghdam. There is still no information concerning what eventually happened to them or any confirmation that they continued to be held captive by the Azerbaijanis.

Therefore, it is obvious that those who wanted to create the impression that bodies had been mutilated by the Armenians disfigured the bodies of these Armenian hostages in order to make it impossible to identify them. Precisely for that purpose, the clothing was removed from the bodies and the bodies of the unfortunate victims were so badly disfigured that they were unrecognizable.

In the light of the above facts, it may confidently be said that the killing of the peaceful inhabitants of the village of Khojaly and of the Armenian hostages being held there was the work of the Azerbaijani side, which committed this crime against its own people in the name of political intrigue and the struggle for power.