On February 22, 2014, an enlarged session of the Board of Political Science Association of Armenia (PSAA) was held on the Azerbaijani falsifications of the Aghdam events (Khojalu provocation) of February 26, 1992, at the Drastamat Kanayan Institute for National Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Defense, RA. The Chairman of the PSAA, Doctor of Political Science Hayk Kotanjian headed the Session. At the session the PSAA made the following announcement: “The Aghdam Events (Khojalu Provocation) ̶ a Symptomatic Example of the Azerbaijani Authorities’ Falsification Policy”.
On February 26, 1992, the Aghdam events took place, which are presented by the Azerbaijani side as the “Khojalu massacre”, during which a group of inhabitants of Khojalu was cold-bloodedly shot down by the Azerbaijani paramilitary forces in the territories under their control.
Aiming to overthrow President Mutalibov, the oppositional Popular Front of Azerbaijan used the Karabakh troops’ forced operation to suppress the Azerbaijani forces’ Khojalu-stationed weapon emplacements regularly shelling the Armenian-populated Stepanakert and surrounding villages. President Mutalibov personally testified it in his interview to the Russian “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” in 1992.
Prior to the operation, the Karabakh side abiding by the norms of humanitarian law informed Khojalu authorities of the planned operation and of a safe humanitarian corridor left for the evacuation of the Azerbaijani population.
Right after the tragic events in the Azerbaijani-controlled territories, the Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev photographed and video-recorded the corpses, which were not mutilated. Meanwhile, on the photos taken by the same Mustafayev two days later, these people were already scalped, and their bodies were mutilated ‒ to demonstrate the Armenians’ “cruelty and inhumanity”. The existing irrefutable facts prove that the Karabakh side did not have a physical access to those territories where the people were killed, and later on their corpses mutilated. It is symptomatic, that Mustafayev having witnessed the horrific crime died a few months later in circumstances not clarified yet in the vicinity of the same Aghdam during his journalistic investigation of the villainous Aghdam events.
After the takeover of power in Baku in 1992, following the Aghdam provocation, the new leadership of Azerbaijan, with Abulfaz Elchibey at the helm, tried hard to hush up the heinous crime committed by itself against the citizens of Khojalu, and initiated a targeted falsification of events presenting its own provocation as a “massacre” of civilian population organized by the Karabakh forces. The official Azerbaijan continues this policy to this day.
By means of the vicious propaganda of the “Khojalu events” the Azerbaijani authorities try to harm the international reputation of the two Armenian states, as well as to impose a distorted picture of events on the young generation, thereby favoring Armenophobia and xenophobia.
Considering the fact of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem’s activated propaganda, in particular, the presentation of the myth about the “Khojalu massacre” in the run-up to the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Political Science Association of Armenia strictly condemns the malicious policy of distorting the facts connected with this tragedy urging the international community not to succumb to the falsifications of Baku and Ankara authorities. The Political Science Association of Armenia calls the international community to prevent the distortion of the historical truth.
The Political Science Association of Armenia also appeals to the honest Azerbaijanis to impartially assess the historical facts and not to fall for the Aliyev regime’s xenophobic policy.
