Azerbaijan`s military crimes against its own people internationally  recognized - MP

ArmInfo. The events recorded in February 1992 in Azerbaijan as a massacre of its own  people for domestic political purposes were later presented as  genocide committed against Azerbaijan. This was written on his  Facebook page by Tigran Abrahamyan, a member of the Armenian  parliament from the opposition faction With Honor, touching upon the  infamous events in Khojaly (Ivanyan).

The deputy recalled that 33 years ago on this day, internal political  clashes in Azerbaijan reached their peak, and the forces that entered  the struggle for power with the aim of removing then-President Ayaz  Mutalibov from office committed a brutal massacre against their own  people.

"This was the stage when the Artsakh self-defense forces gradually  stopped attacks and rocket attacks on the capital Stepanakert and  surrounding villages, and one of the operations was carried out in  the direction of the settlement of Ivanyan (former Khojaly). The  Azerbaijanis turned the settlement into a firing position, using the  Meskhetian Turks who had been resettled there in advance as shields,"  Abrahamyan noted.  According to him, 2-3 days before the operation,  the Armenians not only announced it through loudspeakers, but also  informed the civilian population about the corridor along which the  civilian population was to leave through the valley of the Karkar  River to Aghdam, which was controlled by the Azerbaijanis.

"However, according to the Azerbaijanis, at the instigation of the  Popular Front fighting for power, part of the civilian population was  never evacuated from Khojaly, part was sent in the wrong direction,  and part of the civilians who reached Aghdam along the corridor were  shot by Azerbaijani militants in order to facilitate the process of  changing power in Azerbaijan, which subsequently happened.

I repeat: that part of the village of Aghdam, where atrocities  against their own people took place, was completely under the control  of the Azerbaijani forces," the oppositionist noted.

At the same time, he noted that, by a strange coincidence, the  eyewitnesses who spoke about the atrocities and reprisals committed  by the Azerbaijanis against their own people, the cameraman who  filmed them, and the editor of "Monitor", who published this in his  newspaper, were subsequently killed by unknown persons, and those who  spoke about this publicly were sentenced to various terms of  imprisonment, in other words, an attempt was made to cover up the  tracks.

"Later, in order to edit their own history and its shameful page, the  Azerbaijani authorities tried to attribute this to the Artsakh  self-defense forces, but what happened had already been recorded and  turned into documentary materials not only by Azerbaijanis (many of  whom were subsequently physically destroyed), but also by foreign  media and journalists. Regardless of how silently and weakly the  current Armenian government demonstrates the facts of mass killings  and forced deportations of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad and  Maragha, the war crimes of Azerbaijan, including against its own  people, are also internationally recognized facts," the MP concluded. 

Independent Azerbaijani television journalist and cameraman Chingiz  Mustafayev, who filmed on February 28 and March 2, 1992, doubted the  official Azerbaijani version and began his own investigation into the  events in Khojaly. The journalist's very first message to the Moscow  agency "DR-press" about the possible involvement of the Azerbaijani  side in the crimes cost Mustafayev his life: he was killed near Akna  (Agdam), under circumstances that are still unclear. Talking about  the flight to Ivanyan (Khojaly), he noted that he was unable to film  the corpses in Ivanyan (Khojaly), because "there were no trace of the  dead there at all:"

During the first flight, journalists filmed only a couple dozen  corpses of Azerbaijani soldiers found near the village of  Nakhichevanik

During the second flight to the area of the mass murder of people,  already on March 2, 1992, journalists noticed that the position of  the bodies on the ground and the degree of damage and injuries,  compared to the first inspection, had changed dramatically. Chingiz  Mustafayev informed President Mutalibov that the position of the  bodies and the damage to the corpses did not match the initial  inspection, who by that time had already guessed the reasons for the  tragedy.

Mutalibov replied: "Chingiz, do not tell anyone a word about what you  have noticed. Otherwise, you will be killed."

Chingiz Mustafayev was killed in the same field where he was filming  the main Azerbaijani "argument".