TODAY.AZ / Politics

Foreign Ministry: Khojaly genocide is international crime

23 February 2017 [13:34] - TODAY.AZ

By Azernews


By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry made a call on necessity of granting a legal appraisal to the Khojaly genocide, a bloody crime committed against the Azerbaijani citizens on February 26, 1992.    

"The act perpetrated in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly is viewed as international criminal offence under the international criminal law and the Khojaly genocide should find its legal appraisal," the ministry said in a statement released in connection with the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Khojaly genocide.

From October 1991, the town of Khojaly was entirely surrounded by the Armenian Armed Forces. After the massive artillery bombardment of Khojaly, Armenians began assault on the town from various directions on the night of February 25-26, 1992. Finally, the Armed Forces of Armenia, with the help of the infantry guards regiment No. 366 of the former Soviet Union, implemented the seizure of Khojaly.

The ministry noted that invaders destroyed Khojaly and with particular brutality implemented carnage over the peaceful population of the town. As a result, 613 civilians were killed, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly, while 1,000 people were wounded and 1,275 people were taken hostage. The fate of 150 of them remains yet unknown.

“The intentional slaughter of the civilians in Khojaly was directed at their mass extermination only because they were Azerbaijanis,” the ministry underlined.

All those slaughters and tortures by the Armenian Armed Forces in Khojaly, including the mass killing, scalping, beheading, bayoneting of pregnant women and mutilation of bodies, were well documented by the law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan, many independent sources, including Armenian ones, local and international media and eyewitnesses of this tragedy, the statement stressed.

The ministry said that Armenia’s then-Defense Minister and current President Serzh Sargsyan, in his interview with the UK journalist Thomas de Waal, made a hideous revealing statement by saying “before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hands against the civilian population. We were able to break that stereotype.”

The ministry noted that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by Armenia in the course of the ongoing aggression against Azerbaijan constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, in particular the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The crimes committed by Armenia against Azerbaijan also constitute a serious violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In its judgment of April 22, 2010, the European Court of Human Rights arrived at an important conclusion with respect to the crime committed in Khojaly, qualifying the behavior of those carrying out the incursion as “acts of particular gravity which may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity,” the ministry’s statement said.

The national legislative bodies of more than 15 countries as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation adopted a number of resolutions and declarations that condemn the massacre of civilian population in Khojaly and recognize the tragedy as an act of genocide and crime against humanity.

“Azerbaijan is confident that the consistent measures being taken at the national level, as well as the existing international legal framework, will serve to end impunity and to bring to justice those responsible for the grave offences committed in the course of Armenia’s aggression against Azerbaijan,” the statement said.

In conclusion, the ministry stated that Azerbaijan calls upon the international community to condemn and recognize the crimes against humanity and act of genocide committed by Armenia in Khojaly against the civilian Azerbaijani population.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/politics/158896.html

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