[Congressional Record: February 18, 2005 (Extensions)]
[Page E284-E285]
>>From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr18fe05-28]
REMEMBERING THE TRAGEDY OF KHOJALY
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HON. DAN BURTON
of indiana
in the house of representatives
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, for years a number of
distinguished Members of this House have come to the Floor of this
Chamber every April to commemorate the so-called Armenian Genocide–the
exact details of which are still very much under debate today almost 90
years after the events. Ironically and tragically, none of these
Members has ever once mentioned the ethnic cleansing carried out by the
Armenians during the Armenia-Azerbaijan war which ended a mere decade
ago.
Khojaly was a little known small town in Azerbaijan until February
1992. Today it no longer exists, and for people of Azerbaijan and the
region, the word “Khojaly” has become synonymous with pain, sorrow,
and cruelty. On February 26, 1992, the world ended for the people of
Khojaly when Armenian troops supported by a Russian infantry regiment
did not just attack the town but they razed it to the ground. In the
process the Armenians brutally murdered 613 people, annihilated whole
families, captured 1275 people, left 1,000 civilians maimed or
crippled, and another 150 people unaccounted for in their wake.
Memorial, a Russian human rights group, reported that “scores of the
corpses bore traces of profanation. Doctors on a hospital train in
Agdam noted no less than four corpses that had been scalped and one
that had been beheaded. . . . and one case of live scalping:”
Various other witnesses reported horrifying details of the massacre.
The late Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev, who was the first
to film the aftermath of the massacre, wrote an account of what he saw.
He said, “Some children were found with severed ears; the skin had
been cut from the left side of an elderly woman’s face; and men had
been scalped.”
Human Rights Watch called the tragedy at the time “the largest
massacre to date in the conflict.”
The New York Times wrote about “truckloads of bodies” and described
acts of “scalping.”
[[Page E285]]
This savage cruelty against innocent women, children and the elderly
is unfathomable in and of itself but the senseless brutality did not
stop with Khojaly. Khojaly was simply the first. In fact, the level of
brutality and the unprecedented atrocities committed at Khojaly set a
pattern of destruction and ethnic cleansing that Armenian troops would
adhere to for the remainder of the war. On November 29, 1993, Newsweek
quoted a senior US Government official as saying “What we see now is a
systematic destruction of every village in their (the Armenians) way.
It’s vandalism.”
This year, as they have every year since the massacre, the leaders of
Azerbaijan’s Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities issue appeals on
the eve of commemoration of the massacre of Khojaly urging the
international community to condemn the February 26, 1992 bloodshed,
facilitate liberation of the occupied territories and repatriation of
the displaced communities.
And every year, those residents of Khojaly, who survived the
massacre–many still scattered among one million refugees and displaced
persons in camps around Azerbaijan–appeal with pain and hope to the
international community to hold Armenia responsible for this crime.
I am pleased to say that on January 25, 2005 the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe overwhelmingly adopted a resolution
highlighting that “considerable parts of Azerbaijan’s territory are
still occupied by the Armenian forces and separatist forces are still
in control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.” It also expressed concern
that the military action between 1988 and 1994 and the widespread
ethnic hostilities which preceded it, “led to large-scale ethnic
expulsion and the creation of mono-ethnic areas which resemble the
terrible concept of ethnic cleansing.”
Mr. Speaker, this is not the ringing condemnation that the survivors
of Khojaly deserve but it is an important first step by an
international community that has too long been silent on this issue.
Congress should take the next step and I hope my colleagues will join
me in standing with Azerbaijanis as they commemorate the tragedy of
Khojaly. The world should know and remember.
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