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A year ago, Mexican MP Magdalena del Socorro NúñezMonreal organised a day of discussion of forced disappearance and genocide in the Chamber of Deputies of the Congress of Mexico.

IlgarMukhtarov, the Ambassadorof Azerbaijan, also took part in the event and presented his view on what happened in Khojaly on 26 February 1992. Azerbaijan’s official position on the issue is promoted by the government of President IlhamAliyev, the son of the dictator Heydar Aliyev, known in Mexico due to the polemic against his statue on the Paseo de la Reforma avenue. In an article titled “’Caviar diplomacy’ in Mexico,” Rodrigo Gómez Garcíaquestions the relevancy of that position. The article is available on the website of the local agency SinEmbargo MX.

In a deep unawareness of the meaning and usage of the word ‘genocide,’ an attempt was taken up at the conference to force the concept, which does not correspond to Raphael Lemkin’s classification of 1943, defined in the UN 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, Gómez García highlights. According to him, the most alarming part is the lack of critical approach towards the Azerbaijani government’s position by the Mexican deputies.

The Khojaly events can be considered neither a genocide nor a massacre, the author stresses. He analyses the two concepts based on the Encyclopaedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, according to which the concept ‘genocide’ is composed of three essentialelements: acts, intent and victim group.In the UN’s definition, there arefive enumerated acts thatare distinct in nature, yet unified as strategies.

Three of these are aimed at destroyingan existing group: killing, causing serious harm, and/orcreating destructive conditions. The other two specified acts are aimed at ruining the possibility of thegroup’s continued existence.The issue of intent is generally understood to limit claimsof genocide to those cases where political violence ispurposefully directed toward the destruction of agroup. This political objective may be presented as official policy, or it may be expressed through the coordinatedand systematic nature of state-sponsored terror. The genocide is definedas a unique crime that isdirected not against individuals per se, but instead targetsvictims because of their membership in a national,ethnic, racial or religious group.

Citing the same Encyclopaedia, Gómez Garcíadefines the term massacre as a form of action, usually collective, aimed at the elimination of civilians or non-combatants including men, women and children. According to expert, the differencebetween genocide and massacre is that the term massacre refers to deliberate but not systematic killings of unarmed people during a relatively short period of timein a geographically small and limited area.

“Why doesn’t any of the above two definitions apply to Khojaly?” Toanswer this question, the author sets on describing the events that took place in 1992. The settlement is 7 km from Stepanakert. From this village, the Azerbaijani forces were shooting at the posts in Stepanakertand killing Armenian civilians in January and February of 1992. It is worth mentioning that the only airport was near Khojaly, which made the village a strategic position in the confrontation ofthe Azerbaijani forces and the Armenians during the Karabakh war.

“It is also important to point out that Armenia did not invade Azerbaijan. It was the decision of the Armenians living in Nagorno Karabakh to opt for the right to self-determination, a principle of the international right supported by Mexico as the main axis of its foreign policy,” Gómez García writes.

Defeated in the war, the Azerbaijani army decided to evacuate the residents of Khojaly, mostly Meskhetian Turks from Central Asia, who had just managed to settle there. To that end, the Karabakh liberation army formed a humanitarian corridor allowing the civilians to go to the city of Aghdam through it. Citing the information of Human Rights Watch, the author writes that accompanied by a dozen of uniformed and armed militaries, a column of refugees left the town ¬at dawn. By that time, Khojaly had already been taken by the Armenian forces. 

However, according to the author, there can be no word about genocide or massacre here. Those killed that on outskirts of Aghdamwere accompanied by armed and uniformed Azerbaijani troops. In its report, Helsinki Watch (now Human Rights Watch, – ed.) informs about armedclashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces. A 21-year-old Azerbaijani woman and an Azerbaijani soldier – both from the group leaving Khojaly – confirmed this. The rights group’s report implies that the Azerbaijani military personnel used the civilians as a human shield,and many were killed in the clash, the author writes.

He notes that AyazMutalibov was Azerbaijan’s president and the chief commander-of-arms of the army then. The political intrigues triggered after the tragedy became the reason for his resignation and subsequent exile. On 2 April 1992, hardly after acouple of months after the Aghdam events, the exiled president Mutalibov told the NezavisimayaGazeta newspaper that Khojaly’s capture by the Armenian forces did not come as a surprise and that a humanitarian corridor had been left for the refugees to reach the city of Aghdam, which was controlled by the Azerbaijanis at the time. One ofthe columns that left Khojalywas attacked very close to Aghdam, in a territory controlled by the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan. According to the former president, this was done by the Azerbaijani opposition, which intended to use the incident for his resignation and accusation in the happening. Nine years later, AyazMutalibov, still in exile, reiterated his statement. He told the journal NovoyeVremya (6 March 2001) that “the shooting of the residents of Khojalywas obviously organised by someone to take the control of the power in Azerbaijan.” This someone was the dictator Heydar Aliyev, the father of Azerbaijan’s current president, Gómez García clarifies.
“The disorganised fight near Khojaly is an act of war, where, unfortunately, civilians were killed, irrespective of whether it was organised by the Armenians, as per Azerbaijan’s claims, or by the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, as the Armenian side claims referencing ex-president Mutalibov’s words. Nevertheless, this fight cannot be qualified a massacre due to the above-mentioned definition, let alone a genocide,” reiterates the author.

In order to demonstrate Azerbaijani government’s distortion of facts, he cites Azerbaijani official NamigAliyev’s list presented in the report of Rachel Denber from Helsinki Watch. As civilians who lost their lives in Khojaly, 133 people, including 103 women and 83 children are mentioned in the list. However, this figure is different from the official data presented later, according to which 613 people were killed, including 103 women and 83 children.

Therefore, the author highlights, the Azerbaijani Embassy’s activities in Mexico and Latin America are a result of the strategy ofthe Azerbaijani government to distort the facts about Khojaly using various platforms for that and lobbying the deputies, who are not well informed about the Karabakh conflict, to adopt resolutions supporting Azerbaijan’s version of the events.

“Besides, if Mexico is interested in supporting a resolution on Karabakh conflict, it must also admit that about 10 thousand Armenians were killed in that same war, many of them falling victims to the pogroms perpetrated by the same Azerbaijani government. Another circumstance that should be taken into account is that the Khojaly campaign is part of a policy, whose key objective is the denial of the Armenian Genocide committed in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923,” the author points out.

On February 26, 1992, during the war in Karabakh, around 200 to 300 people (according to Human Rights Watch, and 600 according to the version propagated by Azerbaijan) were killed in unknown circumstances near the city of Aghdam. They have been deliberately withheld by the Azerbaijani authorities in the midst of the military actions. Population of the village of Khojaly, which was one of the firing points shooting at the blockaded Stepanakert (among five others) was kept in the village for months by force and was not evacuated by the authorities of Azerbaijan deliberately, in order to use them as human shields later.

Residents of Khojaly coming out through the humanitarian corridor, that the self-defence forces of NKR had left open, freely passed more than 10 km and reached the Aghdam city controlled by the Azerbaijani troops. Later, not far from the positions of Azerbaijani troops dead bodies of the villagers were found. The exact death toll remains unknown as the official Baku publishes data contradicting each other. Parliamentary Commission investigating the tragic death of the civilians at Aghdam city was dissolved by the order of Heydar Aliyev, the investigative materials are kept secret.