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Residents of Azerbaijan's Meshali village address open letter to int'l community -PHOTO

01 August 2023 18:04 (UTC +04:00)

Residents of Meshali appealed to the international community with an open letter, APA reports.

The letter reads: "We – residents of Meshali village of Khojaly which was subjected to massacre by the Armenian armed forces in December 1991, know well the war criminal and recently captured on the road to Lachin, Vagif Khachatryan. His hands are covered in the blood of peaceful people - babies, women, old people.

For 32 years, no international organization has been interested in the genocide committed against us in Meshali, no human rights organization raised a voice of protest against Armenia, and they treated us as if nothing had happened. They have not seen or heard of such a tragedy of us, we are very well aware that they did not want to see or hear about it.

But as soon as the war criminal Vagif Khachatryan was captured, these organizations appeared and called for his release one after the other. We, the inhabitants of Meshali, are outraged about this, we take it as an insult to ourselves. Such calls are unacceptable!

The wounds inflicted on us in Meshali have not yet healed, we have been suffering from these war crimes for years, and we have been displaced from our native lands.

Today, hundreds of families from Meshali village live compactly in the Meshali settlement for refugees in Goranboy district. Today, it is the demand of every resident of Meshali that Vagif Khachatryan and other war criminals like him should answer before us - in Azerbaijani courts.

We have been waiting for this moment of justice for decades, this is the solace left for us after the sufferings we have experienced, the relatives and loved ones we have lost. We have lived with longing for this day for years, and have not lost our faith and hope for a single day.

We embrace our border guards who revealed and detained war criminal Vagif Khachatryan with top professionality, our children servicing under the Azerbaijan law enforcement agencies, we applaud them, and we say kudos to them!

For 32 years our calls have been ignored, and none of these war criminals have surrendered to Azerbaijan.

Let the ones who try to exonerate and free them be assured that none of these will be useful. All war criminals will get the same fate as Khachatryan.

They thought in 1991 that the crimes they have committed will be left unpunished, they saw us as helpless. Today Azerbaijan is a strong, winning state, it has Victorious Commander-in-Chief! We have gathered like fists around Victorious Commander-in-Chief!

Let all the war criminals, and murderers who have committed the Khojaly genocide hiding in Karabakh hear well that nothing will be the same as before. They will answer!

Those calling for the release of Vagif Khachatryan should be ashamed and embarrassed in front of the residents of Meshali and Khojaly and the people of Azerbaijan. We ask them: when will you protect our rights? Such actions are not compatible with human and moral values.

If there had been an international reaction to what happened in connection with the Meshali genocide, if necessary, measures had been taken, the same situations would not have been repeated in Garadaghli, Khojaly City, Agdaban, Ballygaya, Bashlibel, and several other residential areas of Azerbaijan.

Silence in the face of these crimes encouraged the Armenian authorities to expand the occupation and commit new massacres.

We regret that the Armenians are abusing the medical evacuation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in exchange for the goodwill shown by Azerbaijan, and they are trying to take advantage of it for both smuggling and the escape of criminals like Khachatryan.

International Committee of the Red Cross vehicles should not be a haven for criminals. International humanitarian law is also against it.

Armenian fascists who committed crimes against humanity should be punished in the same way as fascists and Nazis were punished after World War II. It is not worth looking for something unusual here.

The measures that condemned Khachatryan to answer before the law have nothing to do with the peaceful Armenian population living in Karabakh. We - residents of Meshali - are looking forward to the day when we will return to Khojaly - our native homes. Unlike people like Khachatryan, we have never had enmity with peaceful people.

We, the residents of Meshali, who have experienced such a severe tragedy, still show wisdom, we want to live in peace from now on, and we see no problem in living there alongside Armenians, but punishing war criminals before the law is an important condition for ethnic reconciliation.

Unfortunately, even after the 44-day war, Armenia did not take any steps to punish these war criminals.
We demand the international community compel Armenia to punish and hand over those who committed crimes against humanity against the people of Azerbaijan. There is no other way for peace and coexistence!"