"Srebrenica, Bucha would not happen if the world had not turned a blind eye to Khojaly" Lithuanian journalist's remarks at Global Media Forum

When Armenian militants killed civilians in Karabakh, and when they committed genocide in Khojaly and massacred more than 600 people, including elderly women and children, overnight, the international media kept silent.

According to Report, Richardas Lopaitis, a Lithuanian journalist participating in the Global Media Forum, made the remarks while speaking to journalists in Shusha.

He noted that in February 1992, at the height of the First Karabakh War, he was in Karabakh, in the thick of the events.

"If the world media had not kept silent then, had not turned a blind eye to the tragic events, they were not even tragic events, but the most real genocide, this would not have happened again later in Bucha (Ukraine) and other places. There was a lot of disinformation on the part of Armenian politicians, they hid the truth about Khojaly. And if the international media had come there, the world would have heard the truth," he noted.

According to Lopaitis, the journalists who were in Karabakh at that time and saw the bodies of those killed in Khojaly and other places could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

"Even the most authoritative big media, Reuters, BBC did not come there...," the war correspondent noted with regret.

He shared his memories of those tragic events and said that at that time he made a vow to always write the truth and fight for justice, which he did in his future work when he worked in Chechnya and other "trouble" spots. Although, as the journalist noted, he had repeatedly faced threats.

According to R. Lopaitis, he is happy to be in Shusha now, which for others may be just a fortress and stones, but for every Azerbaijani, it is a native city, the birthplace of Azerbaijani mugham, famous poets, writers, and thinkers, the pearl of the Caucasus and the cultural capital of the country.

"I always believed and hoped that we would come back here. I believed that Karabakh would prosper again," he said, noting that he could not have dreamed that after so many years he would be drinking tea and coffee in Shusha.

Lopaitis expressed gratitude to Hikmet Hajiyev, Assistant to the President and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, for the invitation to the Global Media Forum and for the fact that he could see Karabakh's revival after 30 years with his own eyes.