Feb. 26: 20th Anniversary Of The Azeri Genocide By Armenians

[gerenimox]

Survivor asks Sarkozy, Sarksyan in letters to acknowledge Khojaly massacre

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Zarifa Guliyeva. (Photo: Today's Zaman)
21 February 2012 / TODAY'S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
A young Azerbaijani survivor who lost 22 family members in the unprecedented Khojaly massacre by Armenian militias has sent letters to the French and Armenian presidents, accusing them of turning a blind eye to one of the bloodiest atrocities in the post-Cold War period.
“You must be familiar with Khojaly, not only because you are a native of the historical Azerbaijani town of Khankendi, [but because] it is a town where, on Feb. 26, 1992, as a result of the monstrous crimes carried out by the occupying Armenian forces, 613 people were killed and more than 1,275 were taken prisoner, 150 people went missing, 487 became disabled,” wrote Zarifa Guliyeva, 20, to Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan. Guliyeva was fortunate enough not to have been killed by Armenian forces in the small town of Khojaly two decades ago.
Khojaly, a town in Nagorno-Karabakh, over which the then-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia fought between 1988-1994, is a sister town of the Czech Republic village of Lidice, which during World War II was almost entirely wiped out by the Germans. The international advocacy organization Human Rights Watch called the tragedy in Khojaly “the largest massacre of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.” The watchdog group claimed Armenian armed forces were responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians.
In her letter to Sarksyan, Guliyeva asks him to fully acknowledge the “responsibility of the Armenian side” in committing genocide against Azerbaijani civilians in Khojaly. She urges the Armenian president to speak out about the crimes that he acknowledges have been spoken of quietly, which she read about in “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War” authored by Thomas de Waal, the most distinguished regional expert who is especially known for his commentaries on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and its settlement processes. She believes such openness could start a “new chapter in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”
According to the book, when “asked about the taking of [Khojaly], the Armenian military leader Serzh [Sarksyan] said carefully, ‘We don't speak loudly about these things'.”
A letter to Sarkozy

Addressing French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a separate letter, Guliyeva asks him to imagine what it means for a kid to grow up without a father, to lose that sense of support in life.
She also asks him if he is familiar with the name of Khojaly. “The only ‘fault' of these people was their Azerbaijani nationality. You tell me, if this is not GENOCIDE, then what is?” Guliyeva says she wants to make the French president think about the Khojaly tragedy that happened two decades ago and draw a parallel between Khojaly and the Armenian “genocide” of 1915, the denial of which is penalized by French law.
Guliyeva hopes Sarkozy will be able to provide a worthy and fair assessment of the genocide committed against the Azerbaijanis in Khojaly. Guliyeva urges Sarkozy and his party to start a discussion in the French Senate of a law that would recognize the Khojaly massacre as genocide. Guliyeva says that Sarkozy, with this initiation, could change the recent unfavorable impression Azerbaijanis have of him after the adoption of a French bill penalizing the denial of the Armenian “genocide.”

‘Khojaly perpetrators must be punished’

The then-Khojaly governor and a current Azerbaijani deputy, Elman Mammadov, has labeled the Khojaly massacre a crime committed against the international community and called on foreign countries to punish the perpetrators of the mass killings that took place in 1992. “The perpetrators of the Khojaly massacre must be punished,” Mammadov said at a ceremony held at Bahçeşehir University on Monday to commemorate the hundreds killed in the Khojaly massacre, noting that the people of Khojaly, irrespective of ethnic and religious origin, hope that no one has to experience such kind of tragedy again. Mammadov also mentioned that no help came to them despite continuous calls on the day of the massacre, recalling how the government officials of the town were unable to defend the civilians brutally killed by armed soldiers. He said the closest Azerbaijani village was 20 kilometers away, adding that there were Armenian villages between Khojaly and this village, meaning any potential help was blocked. Samet Altıntaş, İstanbul

http://www.todayszaman.com/...in-letters-to-acknowledge-khojaly-massacre.html

[ellisonz]

1. Your link isn't working for this poster.

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[gerenimox]

2. here is the link

[link:http://www.todayszaman.com/news-272053-survivor-asks-sarkozy-sarksyan-in-letters-to-acknowledge-khojaly-massacre.html|

[ellisonz]

3. Thank you.

Violations of human rights wherever they occur, and to whomever they occur, are outrages that should not be denied or minimized. When we do so, we denigrate our own humanity...

[gerenimox]

4. Exactly.

so when will Armenians and other christian countries recognize the Azeri and Turkish genocides? Or is it that only the lives of christians are valuable?

[eissa]

5. Give me a break

Let the Turks first acknowlege the genocide they committed against the Armenian, Assyrians and Greeks post WWI where literally millions were murdered, raped and sent out on death marches into the deserts of Syria, or the mountainous regions of northern Iran, then maybe we'll talk. My grandparents and in-laws managed to survive (barely) and I've passed those stories on to my children. The world may have forgotten, but we won't.

[gerenimox]

7. 600,000 of Turks were genocided by Armenians

600,000 of Turks were killed by the Armenian tashnak terrorists and this was way before any Armenian was replaced. The Turkish population of Yerevan in in the mid 1800`s was 40%. Today, they constitute the 0% of the population. Where have they gone if they were not genocided? Your grandparenst survived? Cool. You can also find many Turks whose grandparents survived or got killed by Armenians. Refer to the link above to see one.

[eissa]

8. No thanks, I won't bother reading propaganda of genocide deniers (eom)

[gerenimox]

9. it`s ironic when you christian genocide denialists accuse others

of being genocide deniers. It`s more so when you can`t even tell us where the millions of Turks who once lived in the Balkans Armenia and Crimea have gone.

[eissa]

10. And where exactly have the christian populations

of Turkey disappeared to? Particularly those in the eastern regions where Assyrians and Armenians made up the vast majority for centuries? Where many of their empty houses of worship still stand (at least those not converted to mosques or illegally taken by the government, or are trying to take as is the case with the Mor Gabriel Monastarey in Tur Abdin.) Until you own up to what the rest of the world recognizes as the atrocious crimes against humanity on a massive scale, nearly wiping out almost entire ethnic groups over the course of several years in a coordinated campaign to nationalize the region with ethnic Turks, you can expect a deaf year to your fictionalized "crimes."

[gerenimox]

12. As long as you call the Turkish and Azeri genocides "fiction"

and deny the crimes your ancestors carried out, no Turks will acknowledge anything.

[eissa]

14. I'm not Armenian, so my ancestors weren't involved in this fictional crime

Not that I would have cared if they were. Maybe a little payback for my great-aunt (then 2 years old) being snatched out of the hands of my great-grandmother and shot point-blank in the head.

And the Turks will never acknowledge the genocide, so trying to blackmail us with calling whatever this was by the same term is just wasted.

[gerenimox]

15. Where have the millions of Turks who lived in Armenia gone?

Answer this simple question first. And if you have anything to say about Zarifa Guliyeva whose family was murdered by the christian Armenian genociders other than her being "fiction", please share with us. Otherwise stop hijacking this thread.

[ellisonz]

6. Don't ask me.

I'm not Christian. But given the last 5,000 years or so of recorded history, I don't hold out all that much hope for a paradigm shift in human consciousness. People will always make excuses for committing of violence thereof and for the contingent denial of responsibility for the violence of one group against each other - sure as the sun rises

"The condition of Man...is a condition of Warre of every one against every one." - Thomas Hobbes

[gerenimox]

11. I don`t remember saying that you are christian

But there is one interesting point dealing with christinity. Almost all the countries who recognize the armenian genocide are christian, and none of these christian countries recognize the Inca, Aztek, Maya, Native American, Australian Aborigine, Algerian, Turkish, Azeri, Bosnian and Iraqi genocides carried out by christians. Not even a single of them!

Is this a coincidence or christian hypocrisy?

[ellisonz]

13. I refrain from launching blanket claims against any people at large.

Also, Christian is capitalized as it is a formal name. I would also encourage you to read the Terms of Service for this website: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=termsofservice and the Community Standards: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus

[gerenimox]

16. Post-Genocide Video of Karabagh

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[gerenimox]

17. 02.26.1992 We Will Never Forget

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