No matter how terrible it is to admit, such terrible social phenomena as national hatred and genocide exist in our time. A vivid example of this is the bloody Khojaly tragedy. It was a massacre perpetrated by the Armenian troops in 1992 over the inhabitants of a small village, which is located fourteen kilometers northeast of the city of Khankendi. That event is still in the memory of very many mourners, and every year the inhabitants of the Republic of Azerbaijan remember those horrific days in order to honor the memory of the dead.
Khojaly massacre
The population of this settlement was very small, about seven thousand people. On February night, from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-sixth, quite unexpectedly, the armed Armenian army, with the support of the motorized rifle unit of the Russian Federation, treacherously attacked a peaceful city. First, the town was surrounded, and then, without warning, heavy military guns were fired at it, the village turned out to be almost completely engulfed in flames. Those who survived the shelling were forced to leave their homes, allacquired property and run away. By five in the morning, the city belonged to the Armenians, or rather, those ruins that burned down on the site of the village.
But the troubles of the Khojaly residents did not end there: they, who had fled from the scene of the tragedy into the forest and mountains, were hunted down and tried to finish off. Not all survived. Young girls and women were captured, many of them were literally tortured to death. Men and children were mostly killed immediately. The Khojaly tragedy was a real shock for many enlightened contemporaries.
Terrible reports
According to statistical reports, for Azerbaijan, the Khojaly massacre ended with the following losses: six hundred and thirteen people were killed, including one hundred and six women, sixty-three children and seventy old people. Fifty-six people were killed with extreme cruelty. Some were deprived of limbs, the skin was torn off from some corpses, and later the remains of people burned alive were found. Some people had their eyes gouged out (even in infants), women who were expecting a baby had their stomachs ripped open with knives. The fate of one hundred and fifty people is still unknown.
After this tragedy in Khojaly, as many as eight families were completely destroyed, twenty-four kids were left complete orphans, and one hundred and thirty children lost one parent.
Memorial Day
After that, a decree of the President of the Republic was issued that this mournful day in the history of the country be remembered as the Day of the Khojaly genocide andAll organizations of the international level were later informed about this. And since then, every year on this sad date, every resident of the Republic of Azerbaijan hears the president's address to the people, and in memory of this tragedy maintains a minute of silence.
Memorial
A human rights organization with that name later tried to figure out what was happening. She conducted a detailed study of the area where the tragedy in Khojaly unfolded in order to restore those events. Most of the inhabitants of the city, immediately after the start of the shelling, tried to get out of the encirclement in two main directions:
1. Along the bank of the river that flowed through the city. This road, as the Armenian representatives later assured, was decided to provide residents with a free retreat (but the statistics show that there was no “free corridor” as such, people had to save their lives along this path as well).
2. Through the northern tip of the settlement, there was a convenient retreat to the forest, in which many were going to hide from trouble. This route was used by a minority.
According to the latest reports, the statistics of the count of the dead is not accurate, the real numbers, unfortunately, are many times higher. The Armenian representatives refused to provide their information or comment on the situation in any way.
Those who used the first escape route along the river were mercilessly fired upon, according to the human rights organization Memorial. According to Armenian representatives, this happened onlybecause the people were armed. It is fair to say that there were actually armed men among the retreating. These are defenders from the city garrison. But shelling them is also completely inhumane, they, according to eyewitnesses, did not show aggression at all, the Armenians also fell into the civilian population, who wanted only one thing: to hide from the invaders as soon as possible.
Memorial also tried to calculate how many people froze to death on that cold winter night. Many rushed out of their houses, dressed hastily, in what was possible. After all, they ran away, leaving everything, wanting only to save themselves and their children.
There were many of those who were captured. Later they will return to their homeland, but many of them with lost he alth and a disturbed psyche. Most of the prisoners were girls and children. Those who returned later said that many prisoners were shot. This event cannot be called otherwise than the Khojaly tragedy.
From the scene…
Only two days later, using two helicopters, Russian and Azerbaijani reporters were able to reach the area. Their articles touched the soul of more than one generation. The freshest impressions, filled with horror and misunderstanding, were shared with the whole world by these brave people. Their helicopters were also fired on, only four bodies were able to be taken out of this terrible battlefield.
From a bird's eye view, the full scale of the tragedy was visible, on the yellowed grass, covered with a thin layer of snow, the bodies of the killed people were completely lying. There were a lot of them, and in this masshere and there lay the bodies of women, children and the elderly. Why did these people suffer? They didn't do anything wrong. Yes, and they tried to run to the Azerbaijani border, as if giving up, without showing any aggression.
Khojaly tragedy. Politics and Society
All over the world newspapers wrote about the Khojaly massacre. And there is no other way to call this event, defenseless and innocent people were not just shot, but brutally killed. A real crime against the person, a real genocide. Coming to this place later, the Western media shared their feelings about what happened on all channels.
And the Russian newspaper Izvestia described the Khojaly tragedy and its consequences in very terrible detail. How living people who voluntarily decided to become hostages were exchanged for the bodies of the dead. But what a sight it was! Relatives received corpses with cut off body parts, with skin removed, without eyes, etc.
International Assessment
The UN, the Council of Europe and the OSCE reacted with extreme condemnation to what happened, recognizing the actions of the Armenian side as crimes against humanity. The word "genocide" was mentioned in many reports. The leaders of these organizations have addressed through the media to the families of the victims with condolences.
But the most important thing is that even after so many years this tragedy has not been forgotten. Remembrance Day and minutes of silence remind all residents of the Republic that once their compatriots were victims of war. Anniversary of KhojalyThe tragedy took place not so long ago, and again, with tears in their eyes, Azerbaijanis recalled that terrible February. And not only them, the whole world is grieving along with the citizens of Azerbaijan.
The Khojaly tragedy is a tragedy of the 20th century, which the descendants of the victims will not forget for a long time.
