Alisa Gevorgyan
“Radiolur”
“I do hope that the independent international court will one uncover the falsification of Khojaly, which Azerbaijan speculates for political reasons,” said Vova Vardanov, participant of the Khojaly liberation operation. Freedom fighter Mkrtich Tonoyan said he regrets that we speak about Khojaly only when we have to counter the Azerbaijan’s bluster, ignoring the strategic significance of this operation.
Starting from spring 1991 the settlements of Nagorno Karabakh were being attacked by Azerbaijani OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit). To de-blockade the only airport near Khojaly the Armenian side organized military actions on February 25-26, 1992.
The self-defense forces of NKR opened a corridor to allow peaceful Azerbaijanis leave the city, previously warning the Azerbaijani side. This fact has been confirmed on many occasions even by Azerbaijani officials, namely the then President Ayaz Mutalibov.
Nevertheless, the Azerbaijani side failed to undertake anything to evacuate the peaceful population from the zone of military actions. Moreover, the peaceful residents were killed near Aghdam.
In the course of the past 21 years Azerbaijan has been speculating these events to conceal its own crimes, accusing the Armenian side of massacring the peaceful population.
“We’ve never been beasts and we’ve always dismiss those with such inclinations from our ranks,” Vova Vardanov said.
He avoids reading anything about the Khojaly events; he has seen the truth with his own eyes, and is eager to present it to the international court.
”We never received an order to open fire at the peaceful population. Moreover, we opened corridor to allow people to leave the city. The same approach was used during the liberation of Shushi,” Mkrtich Tonoyan told reporters.
“We possessed information that Azerbaijanis were transporting weapons through the corridor opened for the peaceful population. But even then we refrained from shooting at the cars carrying weapons not to frighten the civilians,” he added.
By speculating the Khojaly events, official Baku is trying to deviate the attention of the international community from the Armenian massacres of Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad and other settlements of Azerbaijan, as well as the border regions of Nagorno Karabakh, particularly the village of Maragha.
Unfortunately, the international community has not yet given a proper assessment to all these crimes committed by Azerbaijan.
