Khojaly massacre: the crime that never expires True scale of victims still unknown

Khojaly is a small town in Azerbaijan. In 1991, its population was 6,300. On the night of February 25-26, 1992, Armenian armed formations, including soldiers from the 366th Motorised Rifle Regiment of the United CIS Forces, committed a blood-chilling crime, genocide, against the peaceful Azerbaijani population of Khojaly.

The town's population was between 2,000 and 4,000 at the start of the attack, according to the Russian Human Rights Centre Memorial, which conducted its own investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy. Just imagine the scale of the savagery of the Armenian thugs: 613 people were killed as a result of the genocide in Khojaly (including those who froze to death on the way there), including 63 children, 106 women and 70 old people. Initially, the fate of 150 people, including 68 women and 26 children, was not known. However, the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan was fully restored as a result of a one-day anti-terrorist operation in September last year. It also liberated the town of Khojaly. The result has been the discovery of more and more mass graves of Azerbaijani civilians.

The number of people missing during the Khojaly massacre has reached 196, deputy head of the working group of the State Commission for Prisoners, Missing Persons and Hostages, Eldar Samedov said. He noted that the State Commission receives new complaints about losses after the liberation of our lands from occupation: "But when we analyse, it turns out that the number of those killed is going to increase and will exceed 200".

This is the shocking truth. Hikmet Hajiyev, Azerbaijan's presidential aide, and head of the presidential administration's foreign policy department, is absolutely right when he writes on social network X that Armenia is responsible for the Khojaly genocide. "Perhaps it is divine justice that on the next anniversary of the Khojaly genocide, committed on February 26, 1992, the remains of these nameless and innocent civilian victims have been found. Their identities will be established through DNA analysis," he wrote.

Yes, another mass grave was discovered last week during the construction of a water and sewage system in Khojaly. It is reported that the majority are skeletons of women and children with their hands and feet tied. This is nothing short of a monstrous atrocity, the true scale of which will apparently only be known in the future. But not a single president or prime minister of Armenia, which is used to demanding that the world recognise the mythical "Armenian genocide" in the Ottoman Empire, has even apologised for this crime. On the contrary, the third president of this country, Serzh Sargsyan, in an interview with the British journalist Thomas de Waal, bragged about the crime committed by the Armenian side. "Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought they could joke with us. They thought that Armenians were incapable of raising their hands against civilians. We had to break this stereotype. And that is what happened," said Sargsyan. Such outrageous cynicism!

This shows that Armenia, which has officially recognised the norms of international humanitarian law, in practice considers their implementation as contradicting its political, criminal and ideological principles. Furthermore, international terrorists are glorified in Armenia and among the Armenian Diaspora. For example, Monte Melkonian. They are memorialised, and their crimes have been turned into "heroic deeds" that new generations of Armenians can learn from.

How can we build, if not good-neighbourly, then at least not hostile relations with those who have been brought up to hate Azerbaijanis? This question is worth asking leaders of major countries and various powerful international bodies. They should be reminded of the fact that no one has imposed any sanctions on Armenia for the genocide in Khojaly. This is not just an instance of the infamous double standard. Let's call a spade a spade. It is the encouragement of criminals. In the words of the Strugatsky brothers, every crime without punishment is an encouragement to the commission of a new crime.