5.4.10

An Interesting Example of Azerbaijani Selective Memory

Azerbaijan has shown a particular willingness to buy itself a place in the genocide "market," especially since its crushing defeat in the military attempt to ethnically cleanse Mountainous Gharabagh of its Armenian population during the early 1990s. The most notorious example of this state-pursued policy has been given through the wildly distorted accounts (pictures and videos included) of what happened in Khojalu in March 1992. These pieces of disinformation have been thoroughly debunked in the newly established website xocali.net, coincidentally hacked a few weeks ago from a Baku-based source (tracing of IPs is still a valid method for documented finger pointing).
It is very sad that the village of Lidice, in the Czech Republic, the scene of one of the most horrifying pages in the Nazi crimes of World War II, was exploited by the Azeri embassy in that country --which does not seem to have better things to do-- to try to push their agenda towards the recognition of the "Khojalu genocide." To equalize a crime against humanity perpetrated against a peaceful village with a botched evacuation of several hundred villagers caught between two fires in wartime, however, can only be generated by a mind unaware of the nuances of international law. The attempt, reportedly, failed to reach its actual blown-out proportions.
Another front in this unending propaganda war has been reopened for the umpteenth time. As reported by APA (Azeri Press Agency) on March 11, the Azerbaijani community in the U.S. is distributing a statement which claims that "March 31 is known as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, referring to the tragic events that happened on March 31-April 1, 1918."
Of course, if you do not have any clue about Azerbaijani history, this statement will leave you even more clueless, especially since "the statement they are spreading is based on the opinion of a number of prominent US historians and experts." We have found out that these experts are Firuz Kazemzadeh, Justin McCarthy (a well-known apologist of Turkish negationism) and Tadeusz Swietochowski, according to the quotes of Adil Baguirov, Ph.D., in BakuToday.net. The statement refers to massacres happening during the Baku Commune period in 1918, a few months before the fall of the city to the attacking Turk Ottoman forces and the massacre of thousands of Armenian civilians, of which nothing is said. Such a selective treatment of history must be viewed as part of the standard procedure of the most blatantly falsifying Turkish/Azerbaijani historiography and propaganda.
"According to APA's Washington DC correspondent, the position of Azerbaijani-Americans is that close to a million Azeris have been massacred in the 20th century as the result of Armenian genocidal campaign. 'This makes for a total of 2,5 million Azeris, Turks, Kurds, Jews, Georgians, Circassians, Tats, Talysh, Lezgins and other people who fell victim to the Armenian policies of ethnic cleansing for the creation of their state, which was supposed to stretch from the Black [S]ea to the Caspian to the Mediterranean" - the USAN statement said.'"
This is lifted from the abovementioned 2005 article of Adil Baguirov in BakuToday.net, where he wrote: "The official position of Azerbaijan is that close to a million Azerbaijanis have been massacred in the 20th century as the result of Armenian genocidal campaign. This makes for a total of 2,5 million Azerbaijanis, Turks, Kurds, Georgians and other people who fell victim to the Armenian policies of cleansing the Caucasus for the creation of their state, which was supposed to stretch from the Black sea to the Caspian to the Mediterranean." As we see, Azerbaijani-Americans have worked to embrace all other minorities in the Republic of Azerbaijan (which in many cases they do not even recognize as such) as supposed part of so-called "Armenian policies of cleansing." One wonders how Armenians were able to kill 2,5 millions people and remain scarcely a million in the area by the time the Caucasus fell under the "pax sovietica" in the 1920s.
One also wonders when reason and logics will rule over minds and hearts to avoid the continuation of explanations and counterexplanations, useless as they are since they cannot debunk the fertile minds of deniers, but nevertheless necessary to make unaware people less gullible to the traps of historical falsification.
Vartan Matiossian

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