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Azerbaijanâ€™s religious leaders address international community and ECHR regarding Khojaly genocide

23 February 2015 09:23 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Mubariz Aslanov – APA. Chairman of Caucasian Muslim Office (CMO) Sheikh-ul-Islam Haji Allahshukur Pashazadeh, Archbishop of Baku and Azerbaijan Eparchy Alexander, head of Baku Mountain Jews religious community Milikh Yevdayev and ordinary of Catholic Church in Baku Vladimir Fekete have addressed the religious leaders of the world, parliaments, international organizations and European Court of Human Rights regarding the 23rd anniversary of Khojaly genocide, CMO press service told APA.

The joint statement says: “There can not be a nation and religion justifying inhuman crimes like violence, murder and aggression that run contrary to the universal moral values. Historical reality is that thousands of innocent, unarmed and defenseless residents of Khojaly underwent sudden and brutal attacks of Armenians, 613 people including the old, children and pregnant women were cruelly killed on the night of February 25-26, 1992. Khojaly city was razed to the ground, 150 were missing, 1275 people were taken hostages and underwent severe torture and the bodies were abused. The Armenian extremists, committing ethnic cleansing, physical and moral terror acts against the Azerbaijanis from time to time, occupied 20 percent of our territories, displaced more than 1 million Azerbaijanis from their lands, carried out acts of vandalism in the Karabakh territory destroying our historical, religious and cultural sites. The deliberate act of genocide committed against civilians in Khojaly was the culmination of their atrocities. Unfortunately, despite the fact that more than twenty years passed, the requirements of four resolutions by the UN Security Council demanding the unconditional withdrawal of Armenian aggressors from the Azerbaijan’s territories haven’t been implemented so far, and the Armenian terrorists haven’t been punished for the crimes they committed. Such impunity leads to recurrence of similar crimes”.

The statement says that the effort to introduce the so-called Armenian genocide which is based on no historical reality and celebration of the anniversaries is nothing but falsification of history for political purposes:

“We, the religious leaders of various confessions in Azerbaijan address the religious leaders of the world, parliaments, international organizations and European Court of Human Rights and urge them to stop the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan, punish the criminals giving political and legal assessment to their criminal acts and recognize the massacre committed in Khojaly as an act of genocide”, the statement says.