UNPUNISHED GENOCIDE
Tuesday, 13 January 2015 09:16
Exactly 25 years ago, on January 13, 1990, mass killings of Armenians
began in Baku. For a week, unimaginable in their cruelty, brutality and
savagery outrages were taking place in the Azerbaijani capital city,
during which hundreds of innocent people were killed. The January
tragedy in Baku, actually, became the last link in the chain of mass
crimes committed in 1988-1990 against the Republic’s citizens of
Armenian nationality.
The events of the bloody week, which were the result of the
anti-Armenian policy consistently conducted by the Azerbaijani
authorities, put a fat point to the existence of the half a million
indigenous and state-forming Armenian population of Azerbaijan,
the exodus of which becameinevitable. A quarter of a century has
already passed since the tragedy in Baku, but it is still echoed
with inescapable pain in the hearts of both those who personally
experienced it and all ourcompatriots.
However, the pain has not subsided yet also because even after a
quarter of a century this terrible crime has not received yet an
adequate legal, political and moral assessment of the international
community. By the way, like all the similar crimes committed earlier
and later by the Baku authorities against the Armenian population both
in Azerbaijan and Artsakh. There cannot be two opinions on the fact
that the monstrous acts of violence against Armenians in Sumgait,
Kirovabad, Baku and other settlements of Azerbaijan were organized
by the authorities of the Republic. They were nationalist actions,
premeditated and planned at the state level, which is testified by
numerous indisputable facts and evidence of eyewitnesses, convincingly
proving the involvement of state structures in the organization of
the mass pogroms, massacres and forced deportation of Armenians.
The planned character of all these crimes allows to state definitely
the Armenophobic andopenly fascist nature of the Azerbaijani state,
no matter who is in power – the Communists, the so-called democrats
of the People’s Front, which were among the main organizers and
perpetrators of the Armenian pogroms in Baku, or representatives of
the current regime headed by Aliyev. It alsoallows us to state the
relationship of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in the early
twentieth century and the genocidal actions of Azerbaijan against the
Armenian population at the turn of the last and present centuries and
the in current days. It is because the criminal policy of these two
states is linked genetically, as it is based on a single ideology
– the ideology of pan-Turkism and extreme nationalism. The crimes
against the Armenian people committed in Ottoman Turkey and Azerbaijan
are the links of one chain and are qualified by international law as
crimes against humanity and mankind.
Another commonality – a policy of denying the Genocides committed
by them – makes native and brings together these two states, the
behavior of which against the Armenian people has not changed for
decades. The authorities of neither Turkey nor Azerbaijan say a single
word of repentance for the mass killing of innocent people. Moreover,
in order to avoid the responsibility for the atrocities committed
by them, the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem is attempting to equate the
victim and the executioner, presenting to the international community
blatant disinformation on the alleged crimes committed by Armenians
against Turks and Azerbaijanis.
Ankara and Baku have still more intensified their efforts to deny the
Armenian Genocide on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the tragedy
of the Armenian people by launching an appropriate propaganda campaign
to counter the international recognition of the Genocide. They do
not even hide the fact that they are acting jointly in this issue,
coordinating their actions. Thus, at a joint press conference of
Azerbaijani President Aliyev and Turkish President Erdogan during the
latter’s visit to Baku in last September, the joint activities by the
foreign ministries, diplomatic missions and Diaspora organizations
of Turkey and Azerbaijan on denying the Armenian Genocide were noted.
This once again confirms the indisputable truth that the mass crimes
committed by Azerbaijan in the 20s of the last century against the
indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh, in particular,
extermination and expulsion of Armenians of Shushi, are an integral
part of the Armenian Genocide. It also confirmed the equal blame and
responsibility of Azerbaijan for the crimes of Genocide that have no
statute of limitation.
It is the impunity of the Azerbaijani authorities, as a consequence
of the indifference of the international community, that allowed the
relapse of the terrible tragedy to happen nowadays in the form of mass
crimes against the Armenian population of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku,
Maragha and a war unleashed against Nagorno Karabakh… All these
tragedies imperatively require an adequate assessment and condemnation
by corresponding international structures, as further keeping silence
is fraught with a new war and new violent tragedies. Azerbaijan is,
in fact, a terrorist state, as it has implemented a blatant policy
of state terror against the people of Artsakh for many years. But,
shouldn’t the present-day international community, which has faced the
threat of terrorism, take measures to protect the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic, which is building a sovereign democratic state, from the
aggressive claims of genocidal Azerbaijan? Or does the international
community consider that Artsakh itself should stop the threat of
Azerbaijani terrorism? Maybe it is so, but it is yet another issue.
Leonid MARTIROSSIAN
Editor-in-Chief of Azat Artsakh newspaper
From: A. Papazian
http://artsakhtert.com/eng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1667:unpunished-genocide&catid=3:all&Itemid=4