The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan Sixtieth
year
General Assembly
Security Council
Fifty-ninth sessionAgenda item 163
The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan Sixtieth year
Letter dated 8 March 2005 from the Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General
I am writing in response to the letter dated 24 February 2005 from the Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations regarding the tragedy in Khojaly, circulated as a document of the General Assembly and the Security Council (A/59/713-S/2005/125). In a pattern that is as familiar as it is abhorrent, the Ambassador of Azerbaijan has once again engaged in disseminating fabricated and totally misleading information about the tragedy in Khojaly aimed only at concealing the truth and the policy of massacres of Armenians meticulously planned and carried out by its leadership from 1988 to 1990 in Sumgait, Kirovabad (Ganja) and Baku. In an effort that has become the trademark of the Azerbaijani leadership and has been elevated to State policy, the Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan puts forward distorted and groundless accusations against my country, conveniently forgetting that the events of those years were clearly documented through eyewitness testimonies, and the Azerbaijani ones among them (see annex). As Armenia has stated on multiple occasions, and as I would like to reiterate here, the armed forces of the Republic of Armenia have never participated in the conflict in and around Nagorno Karabagh. Moreover, no armed forces of the newly independent Armenia could have participated at the events in Khojaly as those forces had not been formed yet in February of 1992. As despicable as it may seem, and immoral as it may sound, the manipulation of the memory of the victims and the suffering of those who survived has become the main tool of the Azerbaijani machinery in a vain effort to disguise its ineptitude and unpreparedness to seriously negotiate a peace agreement that would end the conflict. As for the truth in Khojaly, it is clearly demonstrated in the accounts of Azerbaijanis covering the event and dealing with it. In an interview with the Czech journalist Jana Mazalova in March of 1992, the then President of Azerbaijan stated: “The massacres were staged”. With regard to the unsubstantiated allegation of “ethnic cleansing” against Armenia and Armenians, I would like to present only one example, which speaks for itself. According to the Soviet census of 1926, Khojaly was an entirely Armenian village with 888 inhabitants. In the 1960s, the first Azerbaijani inhabitants appeared in the Armenian Khojaly. In 1988, the last Armenians were brutally killed and driven out of Khojaly. According to the 1989 census, Khojaly was an entirely Azerbaijani village with 1,661 inhabitants. As stated by Arif Yunusov in Tragediya Khodjaly (The Tragedy of Khojaly) in Zerkalo, from 13 to19 June 1992, Khojaly was the focus of a large Azerbaijani resettlement programme (Thomas de Waal, Black Garden, Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2003, p. 170). The policy and ideology behind it was revealed by Heydar Aliyev, the late President of Azerbaijan, in his meeting with Azerbaijani journalists on 22 July 2002: “I was changing the demographic situation in Nagorno Karabagh”. I should be grateful if you would have the present letter and its annex circulated as a document of the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly, under agenda item
I am writing in response to the letter dated 24 February 2005 from the Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations regarding the tragedy in Khojaly, circulated as a document of the General Assembly and the Security Council (A/59/713-S/2005/125). In a pattern that is as familiar as it is abhorrent, the Ambassador of Azerbaijan has once again engaged in disseminating fabricated and totally misleading information about the tragedy in Khojaly aimed only at concealing the truth and the policy of massacres of Armenians meticulously planned and carried out by its leadership from 1988 to 1990 in Sumgait, Kirovabad (Ganja) and Baku. In an effort that has become the trademark of the Azerbaijani leadership and has been elevated to State policy, the Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan puts forward distorted and groundless accusations against my country, conveniently forgetting that the events of those years were clearly documented through eyewitness testimonies, and the Azerbaijani ones among them (see annex). As Armenia has stated on multiple occasions, and as I would like to reiterate here, the armed forces of the Republic of Armenia have never participated in the conflict in and around Nagorno Karabagh. Moreover, no armed forces of the newly independent Armenia could have participated at the events in Khojaly as those forces had not been formed yet in February of 1992. As despicable as it may seem, and immoral as it may sound, the manipulation of the memory of the victims and the suffering of those who survived has become the main tool of the Azerbaijani machinery in a vain effort to disguise its ineptitude and unpreparedness to seriously negotiate a peace agreement that would end the conflict. As for the truth in Khojaly, it is clearly demonstrated in the accounts of Azerbaijanis covering the event and dealing with it. In an interview with the Czech journalist Jana Mazalova in March of 1992, the then President of Azerbaijan stated: “The massacres were staged”. With regard to the unsubstantiated allegation of “ethnic cleansing” against Armenia and Armenians, I would like to present only one example, which speaks for itself. According to the Soviet census of 1926, Khojaly was an entirely Armenian village with 888 inhabitants. In the 1960s, the first Azerbaijani inhabitants appeared in the Armenian Khojaly. In 1988, the last Armenians were brutally killed and driven out of Khojaly. According to the 1989 census, Khojaly was an entirely Azerbaijani village with 1,661 inhabitants. As stated by Arif Yunusov in Tragediya Khodjaly (The Tragedy of Khojaly) in Zerkalo, from 13 to19 June 1992, Khojaly was the focus of a large Azerbaijani resettlement programme (Thomas de Waal, Black Garden, Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2003, p. 170). The policy and ideology behind it was revealed by Heydar Aliyev, the late President of Azerbaijan, in his meeting with Azerbaijani journalists on 22 July 2002: “I was changing the demographic situation in Nagorno Karabagh”. I should be grateful if you would have the present letter and its annex circulated as a document of the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly, under agenda item
163, and of the Security Council.
(Signed) Armen Martirosyan
Ambassador
Permanent Representative
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