Aurelia Grigoriu: Khojaly one of most terrible tragedies of 20th century

/By Azernews/

By Amina Nazarli

February 26 marks the 24th anniversary of the Khojaly Genocide, one of the bloodiest crimes in the history of mankind and one of the most tragic days in Azerbaijan’s history.

On this fateful day back in 1992, Armenian armed forces unleashed hell on the Khojaly town of Azerbaijan, targeting innocent and unarmed civilians. Hundreds perished by the hands of Armenian soldiers, lost to a hatred they did not understand.

Chairman of the Public Chamber of Moldova Aurelia Grigoriu, who was talking to Day.az, said the Khojaly tragedy is one of the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century.

“I learned about the tragedy for the first time at the International Conference of Ombudsmen in Baku in 2010. I mean, the truth about the Armenians atrocities and crimes that the 366th motorized infantry regiment committed in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly on February 25-26, 1992. Why do I focus on this issue? Because until then I was familiar with quite different information about a military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and this information was far from the reality,” she noted.

Grigoriu said the more she read about the events of that bloody night, the more she was seized with horror.

“These are the real events taking place in our time, and the world is still in the dark. Armenians occupied a foreign territory, expelling people from their homes, destroyed and slaughtered hundreds of civilians, including children, women and old people just for the fact that these people were Azerbaijanis,” she said.

The official emphasized that such violence against the people is regarded as genocide.

Commenting on the famous statement of the current Armenian president, who was quoted in Thomas de Waal's book as saying that the Khojaly killings were a deliberate act of mass killing as intimidation, Grigoriu said: “Such statements indicate that the actions of the Armenian military forces were deliberately planned and carried out with the direct intention to kill, maim, destroy with extreme brutality, to intimidate the rest of the population of Azerbaijan.”

Grigoriu further highlighted measures that the government can do for the perpetrators to be punished. She believes that Baku needs to implement systematic and thorough work on the promotion of truthful information in each country, as well as needs to establish friendly contacts at the level of parliamentary groups, universities and constitutional courts.

“Azerbaijan needs the support of the information front, since the information has to be translated into many languages,” she said. “It’s necessary to complete the criminal investigation of the crime and hold an international tribunal for Khojaly.”

Khojaly, the second largest town in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, came under intense fire from the towns of Khankendi and Askeran already occupied by the Armenian armed forces in 1992.

As many as 613 civilians mostly women and children were killed in the massacre, and a total of 1,000 people were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, 25 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, and the fate of 150 of them remains unknown.