ANALYSIS - Khojaly: 30 years of yearning for justice

By Dr. Cavid Veliyev

- The writer is head of the Baku-based think-tank Center of Analysis of International Relations

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Khojaly massacre was perpetrated 30 years ago, but it is still remembered in all its horror today. Thousands of civilians living in the town were surrounded and violently attacked over the course of one night in 1992. On that night and in the massacre of those attempting to flee the attack, 613 civilians were killed.

- How Khojaly was surrounded

Khojaly was Karabakh's only airport-equipped city. Therefore, it was the target of the Armenians, who acted together with the 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment that had remained in the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union. First, the villages around Khojaly were occupied. While this was happening, Khojaly and the civilians living there were surrounded by military units in preparation for the attack. Some Special Police units and 160 volunteers equipped with small arms were the city’s only defenders.

On October 30, 1991, the land connection between Khojaly and the rest of Azerbaijan was cut off: Khojaly was encircled. American journalist Tomas Goltz, who entered Khojaly by helicopter in January 1992, described the situation: “The telephone does not work in the city, there is no electricity, there is no heating system, nothing works. The city's connection with the outside is by high-risk helicopter flights.” The last civilian helicopter reached Khojaly on January 28, and the last military helicopter to deliver fuel and food did so on February 13, 1992.

On February 25, at 10 pm, the 366th Motorized Regiment with armed Armenians, approaching from Khankendi, advanced on the city from three sides and attacked with tanks and armored combat vehicles. Khojaly’s citizens fled in two groups, one to the east and the other to the northeast, to avoid this attack.

- Hundreds of civilians were killed

East of the city, the civilian population crossed a snowbound forest at night and in the morning. Together with a few armed volunteers, they arrived directly above the Armenian village of Nakhchevanik. They were confronted by an armed Armenian group that fired on them. The volunteers returned fire in defense of the civilians, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. The entire group, volunteers, and civilians were killed.

The number of people killed fleeing from Khojaly became apparent after the incident. 613 civilians, including 63 children, 106 women, and 70 older people, were killed in the massacre. Eight families were completely destroyed, 487 people were maimed, and 1,275 were taken prisoner. It is believed that more than 150 people are still missing today. In the city, about two to three hundred civilians stayed in the shelters. The number of those who died in clashes inside the city is unknown.

According to the 1992 Memorial and Human Rights Watch report that was prepared after the Khojaly massacre, many civilians fleeing Khojaly were captured and taken to the Armenian-occupied villages of Pircamal and Nakhchevanik, where they were shot dead.[1] Representatives of the Memorial human rights organization who visited captured civilians from Khojaly and locations in Khankendi where captured Azerbaijani soldiers were held made the following assessment of the situation: “The outward appearance of the prisoners is proof that they were constantly beaten and tortured.”

- Massacre was reported widely

The international press carried the massacre in Khojali in the headlines on the same days. The New York Times newspaper reported the Khojaly events in its March 12, 1992, edition: “Armenian soldiers destroyed thousands of families.”[2] Meanwhile, Russian Army Major Leonid Kravets reported in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper on March 13, 1992, that he saw hundreds of bodies on a hill near Khojaly. Most of them had been killed by cruel torture.[3]

The 366th Motorized Infantry Regiment that attacked Khojaly was removed from Karabakh in March and redeployed to the Vaziani region of Georgia. The Interregional Prosecutor's Office in Karabakh launched an investigation into violations of Article 255, Part 3 and Article 70, sections 4 and 6 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan; the Charter of the International Military Tribunal; and the 1949 Geneva Conventions in connection with this event on February 27, 1992. The Prosecutor’s office collected a large quantity of evidence about the commanders of the 366th Regiment. The Russian Ministry of Defense, on the other hand, has barred prosecutors from examining the commanders implicated in the Khojaly atrocity.

The head of the inquiry went to the Vaziani region of Tbilisi to question the commanders of the 366th Regiment. However, I. Lazutkin, the former Prosecutor of the Khankendi Military Garrison, and Seyran Ohanyan, the Assistant Commander of the Transcaucasian Military District, introduced obstacles preventing them from speaking to the individuals of interest.

In 1997, the president of the Human Rights Organization, Holly Cartner, wrote in her letter to the Republic of the Armenian government, “We still hold the Karabagh Armenians responsible for the deaths of civilians in Khojaly.”[4] In an interview with British journalist Thomas de Waal, the former President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, explained their aims in the Khojaly Genocide: “We do not want to speak loudly about this issue. Until Khojaly, Azerbaijan thought that we could not attack civilians, but in Khojaly, we broke this stereotype.”[5] Police chief Valeri Babayan confirmed Sarkisyan’s statement: “The unit that attacked Khojaly was from Sumgait and other regions of Azerbaijan.”[6] As both statements show, the Armenians had planned to kill the civilians in Khojaly well in advance. Armenians who had left Azerbaijan felt hatred and a desire for revenge against Azerbaijanis, and they found the opportunity to express this in Khojaly. Sargsyan’s words are also an expression of the fact that he formed a special “Revenge Brigade,” composed of Armenians who had migrated from Azerbaijan, to attack the people of Khojaly.

- Still no justice

The Armenian side had two main goals: first, for the civilian population to leave their land and never return; and second, to facilitate the expansion of the invasion by scaring the civilian population in the nearby provinces, thereby breaking the resistance of the Karabakh civilians to the Armenian occupation. In fact, after Khojaly, the entire province of Karabakh and its environs were quickly occupied. The civilian population's resistance in those areas was broken because of fears that what happened in Khojaly might happen again.

International organizations are aware of the perpetrators of the Khojaly massacre and those ultimately responsible for this situation. Unfortunately, even after 30 years, the perpetrators have not been brought to justice. On the contrary, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, who committed the massacre in Khojaly, were elected as president of Armenia and formed various alliances in the international arena to justify the occupation and the massacre. This situation constitutes an obstacle to establishing justice and peace in the region. People who were affected by the Khojaly massacre want those responsible to be punished, and they have not given up hope that this will happen someday in the future.

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.

[1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/1992%20Bloodshed%20in%20Cauc%20-%20Escalation%20in%20NK.pdf

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/03/world/massacre-by-armenians-being-reported.html

[3] https://iz.ru/news/322152

[4] https://www.hrw.org/news/1997/03/23/response-armenian-government-letter-town-khojaly-nagorno-karabakh

[5] http://library.asue.am/open/1876.pdf

[6] http://library.asue.am/open/1876.pdf