of azeri soil is now occupied by x soviet armenia talk about in article may seas smu edu pts seas smu edu paul thompson schreiber writes by nancy najarian huddled around one measly candle or kerosene lamp in the cold how to make others feel the isolation of living in a country of million people completely blockaded by hostile neighbors prevented from receiving adequate supplies of fuel to keep the electric plants running hospitals open schools in operation will anybody a typical armenian revisionist as in the past in x soviet armenia and today in azerbaijan for utopic and idiotic causes the armenians brought havoc to their neighbors a short sighted and misplaced nationalistic fervor with a wrong agenda and anachronistic methods the armenians continue to become pernicious for the region as usual they will be treated accordingly by their neighbors nagorno karabag is a mountainous enclave that lies completely within azerbaijan with no border or history whatsoever connected to x soviet armenia besides the geographical aspect nagorno karabag is the historic homeland and the cradle of the artistic and literary heritage of azerbaijan which renders the armenian claims preposterous even lunatic no one in his or her mind could have imagined that one day such a devious turn of event could have plagued the azeris one cannot even imagine the reverse case to occur for the armenians either would have slaughtered the azerbaijanis or put them to forced exile to maintain their own majority where was she an appeal to mankind during the last three years azerbaijan and its multinational population are vainly fighting for justice within the limits of the soviet union all humanitarian constitutional human rights guaranteed by the un charter universal declaration of human rights helsinki agreements human problems international forums documents signed by the soviet union all of them are violated the ussr s president government bodies do not defend azerbaijan though they are all empowered to take necessary measures to guarantee life and peace the strong army of armenian terrorists with moscow s tacit consent wages an undeclared war of annihilation against azerbaijan as a result a part of azerbaijan has been occupied and annexed hundreds of people killed thousands wounded some azerbaijanis have been brutally and inhumanly deported from the armenian ssr their historical homeland together with them russians and kurds have also been driven out a part of them now settled in azerbaijan some turkish meskhetians lezghins and representatives of other caucasian nationalities who escaped from the central asia where the president and government bodies did not guarantee them the life and peace also suffered from these deportations one of the scandalous vandalisms directed not only against azerbaijan science but the world civilization as well is the armenian extremists destruction of the karabakh scientific experimental base of the institute of genetics and selection of the academy of sciences of the azerbaijan ssr we beg you for humanitarian help and political assistance for the honour and dignity of million azerbaijanis are violated its territory culture and history are trampled its people are shot there is persistent negative image of azerbaijanians abroad and this defamation is spread over the whole world by soviet mass media armenian lobby in the ussr and the united states one of the myths is that all events allegedly involves and generated by interethnic collisions and religious intolerance while the truth is that all these shootings and recent events stem from the territorial claims of armenia on azerbaijan it is a well documented fact that before the conflict there were no frictions between armenians and azerbaijanis on the issue of karabakh hundreds and thousands armenians placidly and calmly lived and worked in azerbaijan land had their representatives in all government bodies of the azerbaijan ssr we are for a united indivisible sovereign azerbaijan we are for a common caucasian home proclaimed in by one of the founding fathers of the azerbaijan democratic republic muhammed emin rasulzade but all these goals and expectations are trampled upon the soviet leadership in favour of the armenian expansionists encouraged by moscow and intended to create a new year reich the great armenia by annexing the neighboring lands the world public opinion shed tears to save the whales suffers for penguins dying out in the antarctic continent but what about the lives of seven million human beings if these people are muslims does it mean that they are less valuable can people be discriminated by their colour of skin or religion by their residence or other attributes all people are brothers and we appeal to our brothers for help and understanding this is not the first appeal of azerbaijan to the world public opinion our previous appeals were unheard however we still carry the hope that the truth beyond the russian and armenian propaganda will one day reveal the extent of our suffering and stimulate at least as much help and compassion for azerbaijan as tendered to whales and penguins the committee for people s help to karabakh of the academy of sciences of the azerbaijan ssr painful search the gruesome extent of february s killings of azeris by armenians in the town of hojali is at last emerging in azerbaijan about men women and children dead in the worst outrage of the four year war over nagorny karabakh the figure is drawn from azeri investigators hojali officials and casualty lists published in the baku press diplomats and aid workers say the death toll is in line with their own estimates the february attack on hojali by armenian forces was one of the last moves in their four year campaign to take full control of nagorny karabakh the subject of a new round of negotiations in rome on monday the bloodshed was something between a fighting retreat and a massacre but investigators say that most of the dead were civilians the awful number of people killed was first suppressed by the fearful former communist government in baku later it was blurred by armenian denials and grief stricken azerbaijan s wild and contradictory allegations of up to dead the state prosecuter aydin rasulov the cheif investigator of a man team looking into what azerbaijan calls the hojali disaster said his figure of people dead was a minimum on preliminary findings a similar estimate was given by elman memmedov the mayor of hojali an even higher one was printed in the baku newspaper ordu in may dead people named and more than bodies reported unidentified this figure of nearly dead is quoted as official by leila yunusova the new spokeswoman of the azeri ministry of defence francois zen ruffinen head of delegation of the international red cross in baku said the muslim imam of the nearby city of agdam had reported a figure of bodies received at his mosque from hojali most of them civilians we did not count the bodies but the figure seems reasonable it is no fantasy mr zen ruffinen said we have some idea since we gave the body bags and products to wash the dead mr rasulov endeavours to give an unemotional estimate of the number of dead in the massacre don t get worked up it will take several months to get a final figure the year old lawyer said at his small office mr rasulov knows about these things it took him two years to reach a firm conclusion that people were killed and wounded when soviet troops and tanks crushed a nationalist uprising in baku in january those nationalists the popular front finally came to power three weeks ago and are applying pressure to find out exactly what happened when hojali an azeri town which lies about miles from the border with armenia fell to the armenians officially people have so far been certified as dead being the number of people that could be medically examined by the republic s forensic department this is just a small percentage of the dead said rafiq youssifov the republic s chief forensic scientist they were the only bodies brought to us remember the chaos and the fact that we are muslims and have to wash and bury our dead within hours of these people were women and were children under years old gunshots killed people shrapnel killed and axes or blunt instruments killed exposure in the highland snows killed the last three thirty three people showed signs of deliberate mutilation including ears noses breasts or penises cut off and eyes gouged out according to professor youssifov s report those bodies examined were less than a third of those believed to have been killed mr rasulov said files from mr rasulov s investigative commission are still disorganised lists of azeri militiamen are dead here six policemen there and in handwriting of a mosque attendant the names of corpses brought to be washed in just one day the most heartbreaking account from witnesses interviewed so far comes from towfiq manafov an azeri investigator who took a helicopter flight over the escape route from hojali on february there were too many bodies of dead and wounded on the ground to count properly in hojali people by the stream and the road and visible around nakhchivanik village mr manafov wrote in a statement countersigned by the helicopter pilot people waved up to us for help we saw three dead children and one two year old alive by one dead woman the live one was pulling at her arm for the mother to get up we tried to land but armenians started a barrage against our helicopter and we had to return there has been no consolidation of the lists and figures in circulation because of the political upheavals of the last few months and the fact that nobody knows exactly who was in hojali at the time many inhabitants were displaced from other villages taken over by armenian forces the independent london heroes who fought on amid the bodies aref sadikov sat quietly in the shade of a cafe bar on the caspian sea esplanade of baku and showed a line of stitches in his trousers torn by an armenian bullet as he fled the town of hojali just over three months ago writes hugh pope i m still wearing the same clothes i don t have any others the year old carpenter said beginning his account of the hojali disaster i was wounded in five places but i am lucky to be alive mr sadikov and his wife were short of food without electricity for more than a month and cut off from helicopter flights for days they sensed the armenian noose was tightening around the to people left in the straggling azeri town on the edge of karabakh at about pm a bombardment started such as we had never heard before eight or nine kinds of weapons artillery heavy machine guns the lot mr sadikov said soon neighbours were pouring down the street from the direction of the attack some huddled in shelters but others started fleeing the town down a hill through a stream and through the snow into a forest on the other side to escape the townspeople had to reach the azeri town of agdam about miles away they thought they were going to make it until at about dawn they reached a bottleneck between the two armenian villages of nakhchivanik and saderak none of my group was hurt up to then then we were spotted by a car on the road and the armenian outposts started opening fire mr sadikov said azeri militiamen fighting their way out of hojali rushed forward to force open a corridor for the civilians but their efforts were mostly in vain mr sadikov said only people from his group of made it through including his wife and militiaman son seven of his immediate relations died including his year old elder brother i only had time to reach down and cover his face with his hat he said pulling his own big flat turkish cap over his eyes we have never got any of the bodies back the first groups were lucky to have the benefit of covering fire one hero of the evacuation alif hajief was shot dead as he struggled to change a magazine while covering the third group s crossing mr sadikov said another hero elman memmedov the mayor of hojali said he and several others spent the whole day of february in the bushy hillside surrounded by dead bodies as they tried to keep three armenian armoured personnel carriers at bay as the survivors staggered the last mile into agdam there was little comfort in a town from which most of the population was soon to flee the night after we reached the town there was a big armenian rocket attack some people just kept going mr sadikov said i had to get to the hospital for treatment i was in a bad way they even found a bullet in my sock victims of war an azeri woman mourns her son killed in the hojali massacre in february left nurses struggle in primitive conditions centre to save a wounded man in a makeshift operating theatre set up in a train carriage grief stricken relatives in the town of agdam right weep over the coffin of another of the massacre victims calculating the final death toll has been complicated because muslims bury their dead within hours photographs liu heung ap frederique lengaigne reuter the independent london serdar argic we closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the turks and then proceeded in the work of extermination ohanus appressian in soviet armenia today there no longer exists a single turkish soul sahak melkonian
