Petition drafted for recognition of Khojaly Genocide by Russia's State Duma

By Rashid Shirinov

A petition has been prepared for recognition of the Khojaly Genocide by the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

The petition was drafted by Russian scientist and historian Oleg Kuznetsov, who has repeatedly denounced the falsification of history by Armenians, APA reported on March 7.

Kuznetsov noted that the petition will be sent to the State Duma and the Federation Council of Russia.

The document reads that the order for committing the Khojaly Genocide was given by incumbent President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, who at that time was the “Chairman of The Self-Defense Forces Committee” and the chief of staff of all illegal armed groups of Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The petition further reads that the parliaments of Mexico, Turkey, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Jordan, Honduras and Djibouti recognized the crimes committed by Armenians in Khojaly as a genocide of the Azerbaijani people.

Moreover, the parliaments of Pakistan, Sudan, Israel, the Czech Republic, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation recognized the events in Khojaly as a crime against humanity.

The petition calls upon the deputies of the State Duma to follow the example of their foreign colleagues and to recognize the crimes of Armenian terrorists in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly on February 25-26, 1992, as a crime of genocide (crime against humanity).

The petition is accessible at http://bit.ly/2n0cOY3

The town of Khojaly was situated within the administrative borders of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Its population constituted over 7,000 people.

Late into the night of February 25, 1992, Khojaly came under intensive fire from the towns of Khankendi and Askeran already occupied by Armenian armed forces. The Armenian forces, supported by the ex-Soviet 366th regiment, completed the surrounding of the town already isolated due to ethnic cleansing of the Azerbaijani population of the neighboring regions. The joint forces occupied the town, which was ruined by heavy artillery shelling.

Thousands of fleeing civilians were ambushed by the Armenian forces. Punitive teams of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh defense army reached the unprotected civilians to slaughter them, mutilating and scalping some of the bodies.

613 people were killed, including 106 women, 70 elderly and 83 children. A total of 1,000 civilians were disabled. Eight families were exterminated, and 25 children lost both parents, while 130 children lost one parent. Moreover, 1,275 innocent people were taken hostage, while the fate of 150 remains unknown.

When Thomas de Waal, a senior associate at Washington DC-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, interviewed Sargsyan back in 2000, the then-Armenian Defense Minister Sargsyan confessed that the Armenian army had indeed carried out some ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in order to achieve its goals.