Baroness Cox: A web of lies behind a noble facade

Baroness Caroline Cox, a member of the House of Lords, known for her avid pro-Armenian position, has once again distinguished herself with her biased rhetoric against Azerbaijan. It happened during the debate in the British Parliament on Lord Flyte's oral plea to the British government on the Khojaly genocide.

Taking the floor at this debate, Cox tried to convince everyone that the Armenian side had allegedly notified the city administration about the offensive and asked to evacuate the population sooner.

"I have been to Nagorno-Karabakh many times during the war in the 1990s and can testify to the events in Khojaly. It is a town where Azerbaijanis launched so many rockets at Stepanakert (Khankendi - Ed.) that it would have been destroyed if Armenians had not taken control of Khojaly. They gave advance notice of the attack and asked the Azerbaijanis to allow the civilians to evacuate, which the Azerbaijanis did not do," Cox explained, according to Armenian media reports. That is, she was simply trying to justify the destruction of an entire town with such an unsubstantiated excuse.

No doubt, Cox realizes that the Khojaly genocide against Azerbaijani civilians was committed by Armenians, and no matter how much she harbors fabrications saying that Azerbaijanis were warned, Yerevan will have to answer sooner or later. The world community is not yet fully aware of what and how has happened in Karabakh during the 30 years of occupation of the region by Armenian militaries, but the epiphany is not far off. Cox's current sham arguments are utter nonsense, designed for the attention of those who are not yet very interested in the essence and history of the Karabakh conflict, or maybe not interested at all in the international situation.

But, on the other hand, even Cox's words do not deny that Armenia was planning to attack Khojaly, and this is already qualified as an act of violence by international law.

However, the lady's absurd attacks on Azerbaijan are commonplace for her, one might say, almost daily. She does this dirty work not because of her love for Armenians, but for her own selfish interests, profiting from the financial "help" of the Armenian lobby. It is also known that previously the Baroness "made money" from subsidies of anti-Islamic organisations and must have pursued this mission with great zeal.

Let us recall that back in February of this year, after the leaks about her financial ties with anti-Islamic structures, Cox was forced to confess to hiding money that she received from the non-profit organisation Equal and Free Limited. According to documents leaked to Sky News UK, Equal and Free Limited received funds from the Los Angeles-based American organisation run by evangelical "philanthropists" Howard and Roberta Ahmanson. Among the information leaked to the press are minutes of regular meetings that Baroness Cox convened in a parliamentary room attended by prominent and often controversial critics of Islam.

As for the extent of this lady's outspoken anti-Azerbaijani activities, they are quite impressive since the days of the late Soviet Union and have not reduced their deceitful intensity to this day, that is, in the post-conflict period. Almost 86 years old, Cox is still shamelessly repeating monstrous lies about the causes of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Karabakh.

One example is her absurd claim that eighty per cent of "historical Armenian lands are now occupied by Azerbaijan". Last January, speaking again in the House of Lords on "Refugees. Mass Exodus", the Baroness lied without batting an eyelid that allegedly more than 91,000 people fled from Karabakh to Armenia in 2020, while another 40,000 were deprived of their homes in the Shusha and Hadrut regions, which she believes are still "occupied by the armed forces of Azerbaijan".

At the same time, she appears to be "fully aware" of Karabakh, having visited it more than 85 times. That is, in fact, Cox admits that she has violated the laws of Azerbaijan 85 times and ignored the norms and rules of international law the same number of times.

Similarly, this lady has ignored numerous facts of destruction and looting of Azerbaijani territories during nearly thirty years of Armenian occupation, as well as missile and bomb attacks on Ganja, Tartar, Mingachevir, and other cities of Azerbaijan located far from the front line. Nor did she condemn official Yerevan over the torture of Armenia-captured Azerbaijani soldiers, who accidentally crossed the conditional border due to bad weather conditions. However, as the Armenian press reported back in November last year, the Baroness enthusiastically participated in a rally in front of the British Parliament "in solidarity with those protesting against the cruel treatment of Armenian prisoners of war and in memory of the victims of torture by the Azerbaijani forces," as she wrote on her microblog on Twitter. Furthermore, the same lady lambasted the UK's policy towards Azerbaijan on the issue of prisoner return. In April 2021, during a meeting with the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Ararat Mirzoyan at the National Assembly of that country, she stated that the position of the British government caused her indignation and that she was personally "doing everything possible to make Azerbaijan responsible for the crime it has committed, for holding prisoners of war".

"I would like more pressure on the international community to bring Azerbaijan to justice," the British politician wishes.

Meanwhile, much to the dismay of Cox and her Armenian sponsors, their shared hopes for Azerbaijan are inconsistent with the overall policy of the British state. Firstly, because the UK fully supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and the principle of inviolability of its borders. Secondly, Baku has a strategic partnership with London, and it is Azerbaijan that acts as a guarantor of energy security in the South Caucasus. Thirdly, specifically regarding the Khojaly tragedy, in March 2016, legislative initiatives on the Khojaly genocide were put forward in the UK Parliament by Bob Blackman, Head of the UK-Azerbaijan inter-parliamentary friendship group, and Patrick Grady, a member of the Scottish National Party in the Parliament. Crucially, these initiatives pointed to Armenia's failure to meet UN Security Council requirements, and indeed the British Parliament explicitly stated that those responsible for the Khojaly tragedy must be brought to justice. Therefore, the aspirations of the advocates of Armenian interests aimed particularly at damaging relations between Azerbaijan and the UK are in vain. So are the hopes of Armenians to justify the Khojaly tragedy through Madam Cox and others like her.