LETTER ABOUT THE CALGARY’S MAYOR DECISION ON KHOJALY’S EVENTS
Noyan Tapan
2012-04-03
CANADA
CALGARY, Mayor Nenshi
Mr. Mayor,
This is an address to you by Alexander S. Manasyan, Professor of
Philosophy, President of the “Political Research Academy” NGO, on
behalf of the same NGO of the Republic of Armenia. This address was
triggered by your decision passed in relation to the tragedy that took
place in the night of February 25-26 1992 in the vicinity of Aghdam.
That night, at the end of the corridor left open by the Defense Army
of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, in the area under the control
of the Azerbaijan People’s Front, civilians who had left Khojaly and
were entering Aghdam were killed – shot dead at close range. Recently,
on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the occurrence, you signed
a document according to which February 26 will be marked every year
as the Day of Remembrance for those innocent victims. This is a
humanistic step. However, there is a painful error in the document
you signed. Leaving the real criminals aside, the document blames
the Armenian side for that massacre of civilians. By this letter we
wish to draw your attention to a number of facts that can ascertain
your ideas about this tragedy.
Through Baku’s efforts, the occurrence was put into circulation by
the name of “Khojaly genocide”. The first verification that we invite
your attention to is related to the name of the tragedy. Usually Baku
is silent about the fact that the slaughter of civilians took place
not in Khojaly but in the immediate vicinity of Aghdam. Baku cannot
deny this circumstance but prefers to avoid it in every way. You
can easily become convinced of this by the materials provided by the
Azeris which we hope you have. After the tragedy Azerbaijani soldiers
and journalists have had free access to the site of the occurrence.
Foreign journalists were also taken from the direction of Aghdam to
photograph the corpses scattered in the field. This is an obvious
evidence that the area was under the control of the Azerbaijani side.
Baku keeps silent about another important fact: the people shot
dead at close range were not Azeris. Before that the Azeris had been
safely removed from Khojaly. Those subjected to slaughter were Turkish
Meskhetian refugees brought there from Uzbekistan who were specially
placed in Khojaly whence the capital city of the Republic of Nagorno
Karabakh was being shelled. Baku had turned Khojaly into a weapon
emplacement by the unmistakable calculation that”the Armenians who
are very intelligent and can orientate themselves clearly during such
situations” would not allow themselves to act the same way (the quote
is from the words of Ayaz Mutalibov, the President of the Republic
of Azerbaijan at that time). Not only Mutalibov, but all Turks knew
(and know) that an Armenian soldier does not raise his hand on the
woman, old man and child of the enemy. It is known that during the
armed conflict with the Armenians Turkish soldiers often dressed
in women’s clothes and saved their lives. David of Sassoon, the
main character of the Armenian national epic poem, calls out to the
opponent before the battle to wake up, get dressed and take weapons,
while Ramil Safarov who killed with an ax the sleeping Armenian officer
Gurgen Margaryan in Budapest who was attending courses under NATO’s
“Partnership for Peace” Program (Safarov was a participant of the
same courses) was proclaimed a national hero in Azerbaijan. I assure
you that we would have been ashamed for that.
(Please see attached the testifying article by Victoria Ivleva, a
Moscow “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper reporter, dated March 1992,
who was walking together with the Meskhetians that night.)
Lastly, another fact connected with the occurrence. Both the residents
of Khojaly and the higher authorities of Baku were aware of the
upcoming attack and the left corridor alike because the Armenian
side had warned them about it by loudspeakers several days before the
attack. The authorities, as stated by the Azerbaijani President Ayaz
Mutalibov, could evacuate the Meskhetians from Khojaly by helicopters,
and had enough time to do it. His order was not carried out. The
Meskhetians could have been evacuated prior to the attack through the
corridorduring daytime. And that would have been the safest way. They
did not do this either.
(Please see attached the respective passage from the interview of
the Czech journalist Dana Mazalova with Ayaz Mutalibov published in
the Moscow “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” on 2 March 1992, immediately after
the events.)
For any official with your status, before signing a paper like that
one, the mentioned and well-known facts would be enough to go deeper
into the gist of the matter and pay more attention to the “facts”
Baku gives today as substantiations for the genocide of the peaceful
resident of Khojaly by the Armenians. You had that opportunity. In
particular, the website could have been helpful where you
could have found a wealth of evidence, videos and documents disclosing
the fabrications of the Azerbaijani propaganda machine. We wish to
believe that you have not done it from unawareness. We also want to
believe that if you had familiarised yourself with the above-mentioned
materials you would not have placed your signature under a document
which protects the actual perpetrators and helps them escape moral
and criminal responsibility. However, the document you signed is not
merely a means to acquit the perpetrators. It is also an insult to the
entire Armenian people who have suffered a genocide and especially
to the Armenians of Azerbaijan who were subjected to massacres and
mass persecutions in 1988-1992. I am originally from Baku, a city
where in 1990 Armenian newborn babies were thrown out of the windows
of maternity hospitals and people were burned alive in the streets
in the circle dance of the brutal crowd… I want to believe that
you are a victim of unawareness – that you were not familiar with
the case, although, frankly speaking, a person of your position
and responsibility should not appear in your situation. If you had
familiarised yourself with the case and had sought for the truth, you
would have surely tried to get the answers to the following questions:
“Why was specifically nighttime chosen to take the Meskhetians out
of Khojaly through the corridor?”
The whole thing leaves no room for doubt that it was done
intentionally, under the cover of the night, to carry out the slaughter
without witnesses.
“Why was the exodus of the people from Khojaly delayed until 26
February?”
After familiarising yourself with the history of the conflict, you
might become convinced that the occurrence was specifically planned
for 26 February, to thereby obscure the genocide of Armenians started
in Sumgait on the same day in 1988, 26 February. The same trick was
applied by the Azeris to shadow the fact of the massacres of Armenians
between 13 and 19 January 1990, putting into circulation the phrase
“Black January”. The “Black January” as Baku presents it, is 20 January
when, after the slaughters of Armenians, the Soviet Army entered the
city to establish public order and to prevent the attempt to overthrow
the state order. In reality, the “Black January” is not 20 January when
dozens of Azerbaijani Turks were killed during the conflict with the
Soviet troops, but the preceding days of the massacres of Armenians.
“Why did Turkish Meskhetians in particular fell victim to the
provocation?”
The answer is more than clear: If Azerbaijanis had been sacrificed with
such cruelty, Baku would explode with demonstrations: the relatives of
the victims would not rest until the role of the Azerbaijan People’s
Front in the slaughter was disclosed. They could sacrifice the lonely
and helpless Meskhetians in whom no one was particularly interested
in Baku, being sure that no forced would reveal the provocation of
the People’s Front.
“Why was the Azeri journalist Chingiz Mustafayev killed in Aghdam
under unidentified circumstances?”
After becoming familiar with the case, you might have found out for
yourself that he had been the first to photograph on the site those
killed and discovered only after three days that the bodies which were
under the control of the Azerbaijan People’s Front where no Armenians
could have been present, were disfigured. He was killed for knowing
the truth and reporting it to President Mutalibov. The latter knew
what was awaiting someone who had become convinced on the site that
the killings of Meskhetians were done by the people of Aghdam and had
advised Mustafayev not tell anyone about it and leave from there. By
the way, Chingiz Mustafayev was not the only one who was killed,
terrorised or neutralized by various methods for the same reason. The
Czech journalist Dana Mazalova who is familiar with the materials of
Chigiz, assures today that she recognised only one photo by Chingiz
among those circulated by Baku: the rest are missing.
“What is the subtext of Mutalibov’s hint during the interview with
Mazalova that “some force was at work to specially discredit the
President” or “someone was interested in” what happened?”
If you read the interview carefully, you will notice that the
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan addresses other case too,
related to a helicopter crash. Here are his words: “After the story
of the helicopter we agreed that no one will report unverified
information”. He refers to the helicopter crash on 20 November 1991
in the vicinity of Aghdam and again in an area out of the control of
the Karabaghi forces, killing officials holding important positions in
the Azerbaijani government. Baku, according to its habit, immediately
accused the Armenians. However the investigation revealed that the
Armenians had had nothing to do with it, and the helicopter that
had taken off from Aghdam had crashed as a result of an explosion
inside it.
Why would the Turkish Meskhetians be killed in mass near Aghdam? Why
would the helicopter having taken off from Aghdam explode? Why would
Chingiz Mustafayev be not be killed near Aghdam? Why did the murder
remain unsolved? It is difficult for you to find the answers to these
questions in Calgary while there are no secrets for us Armenians.
Still during the Soviet years Aghdam became the den of the Turkish
nationalists – the “gray wolves”. They were the very force toppled
Mutalibov hints at: “some force was at work to specially discredit the
President” or “someone was interested in” what happened.” According
to Mutalibov’s instruction it was they who should be evacuating
the civilians from Khojaly, while they not only did not fulfill the
order but also organised the slaughter of the Turkish Meskhetians
who had fled from from Uzbekistan and had been placed in Khojaly by
the authorities of Baku. It was they who blew up the helicopter with
important government officials appointed by Mutalibov. It was they
who killed Chingiz Mustafayev. Eventually, it is these forces which
achieved the toppling of Mutalibov and giving the presidential chair
to obviously pro-Turkish Elchibey. For people who stand closer to
the issue it is clear that this was all directed from Ankara.
What we write about here is in the depth of the regional processes
accompanying the collapse of the USSR and may be unfamiliar to you.
However, without going deeper into the mentioned phenomena, you were
obliged, before signing such a paper, to at least superficially check
the substantiations given by Baku, and the photos proving the beastly
treatment of the Meskhetians that Baku has most likely made available
to you. You should have checked. In that case you would have easily
received the answer to the next inevitably arising question. Here is
that question:
– How truthful and reliable are the substantiations and photos of the
“Khojaly genocide” package spread by Baku?
If you have these at your disposal, we recommend that you start with
the photos and become convinced that these basically have nothing to
do with the mass killings of the Turkish Meskhetians in the vicinity
of Aghdam and are “materials” taken from the events in Kosovo. Another
heartbreaking photo of a mother wailing on her children’s corpses,
is connected with the earthquake in Turkey. The wailing woman is
Kurdish. And so on. If you do not have those materials at your
immediate disposal, please visit and become convinced
that you have been deceived. Become convinced also by your own study
of the issue and by checking the facts we provided. We wish to caution
you that the foreign journalists invited to he site of the salughter
immediately after the tragedy used most strict expressions to describe
Armenians, not suspecting that the terrible crime could have been
committed by those of the same race as the victims. At a time of a
cruel war, with the “hostile Armenians” on the other side, no one even
thought that in order to overthrow Mutalibov and to bring pro-Turkish
Elchibey to power, that horrendous crime could have been committed
by those of the same race as the victims (of course, not without the
participation of the Turkish special services). So, when familairising
yourself with these materials, please be careful about when and by
whom they were written and to what extent they are substantiated. If
you wish, we can provide you with additional facts and arguments.
It would be very disappointing if it turned out that you signed the
document in questionknowing the truth beforehand. In that case your
signature would only prove your personal interest, which cannot do
credit either to you or the municipality you are heading. You can be
sure that it will cast a shadow on the country with rich democratic
traditions of which you are a citizen and for which have all the
Armenians have feelings of sincere sympathy.
However, everything can be corrected, if, after thoroughly
familiarising yourself with the issue and finding out the truth
for yourself, you appear with a respective statement, repeal the
decision passed and seek the forgiveness of Armenians, especially
Armenians of Azerbaijan. This will require ordinary human honesty
and civil courage – qualities you must have as seen from your pathos
of condemning a genocide. We would like to inform you about the fact
that many honest people who managed to escape the traps contrived by
the Azerbaijani-Turkish propaganda machine, became sworn champions
of the Armenian Cause.
We look forward to your response. We will take care that this letter
appears on your desk every week before we receive your response.
Alexander Manasyan
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Associate Member of the National
Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia