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The Azerbaijani nation and its worldwide diaspora annually observe the Khojaly Genocide in February to recall the sacrifices of unarmed civilians who became severe victims of Armenian brutality during the initial phases of the former Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The annual observation of the massacre sends a reminder to the whole world about the need to adopt adequate accountable measures against Armenia regarding the Khojaly massacre while considering it a tragic part of world history.
The Khojaly Genocide claimed 613 lives, including 63 children, as Armenian forces brutally targeted Azerbaijani civilians in 1992.
Akin to Azerbaijani nationals, several curators of the international community have also translated it as a serious war crime and an explicit act of genocide, seeking the appropriate response from the world’s leaders and serious attention of states having close collaborative ties with Armenia.
The impartial historical accounts suggest that the Armenian leaders planned the incident to eliminate the Azerbaijan-inclined tendencies of local people by carrying out a massive attempt of ethnic cleansing to seize the targeted areas and expel the local population from their native homeland. This brutality was formally condemned by the Baku-based leading political authorities and later became their national duty to highlight Armenian war crimes internationally before the custodians of international peace and stability.
The Khojaly town is geographically located in the former conflicted region of Nagorno-Karabak, which was initially under total siege by the Armenian armed forces, and their brutal occupation resulted in the multileveled sufferings of the local population. The occupational Armenian forces ferociously prevented the local attempts to break the siege, and the incident of February 1992 emerged as a brutal episode of humanity.
It was the night of 25-26 February when the Armenian forces violated international humanitarian norms and the legal protocols of armed conflict, sparing civilian populations during the armed conflicts while protecting them from the threats of violence. This brutal February night turned into a miserable picture of humanity in the form of a massive murder of civilians comprising 613 civilians, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 older people.
Reacting to the prevalence of this brutality, the formal Azerbaijan state authorities under the leadership of Heydar Aliyev raised their voices internationally and tried to drag the international community’s attention towards the defenceless people of Khojaly town.
International organizations recognize the Khojaly massacre as a war crime and a violation of humanitarian law.
The incident’s survivors reported shreds of evidence of horrific scenes consisting of exceptional cases of violence and brutality containing the sufferings of women, children, and older people. The brutality witnessed by the survivors is further verified in several factual reports of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. The incident was internationally dubbed a serious humanity crime, which fully suits the conceptual explanations of genocide defined in the Convention “on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” adopted in the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948.
The UNGA’s Resolution 260 (III) authenticates the Armenian brutality of Khojaly town, resulting in the diverse inhumane cases of local people’s victimization due to their Azerbaijani associations and persistent struggle for securing impendence from occupational Armenian control. Additionally, Armenian brutality unequivocally violates the fundamental provisions of the Geneva Conventions, discussing the nature of armed conflicts in the international system and their provisions for sparing civilians during mainstream military operations.
This act of extreme cruelty on the unprotected and defenceless civilians became internationally a stark reminder of the incidents of ethnic conflicts and their manifestations into critical state actions such as Armenian aggression against territorially adjoining Azerbaijan. The transformation of this aggression into a recently resolved longstanding territorial dispute was the main complication in the regional security environment of the South Caucasus.
In the debate of resolving this territorial clash between two neighbouring nations, Pakistan played an instrumental role in supporting the Azerbaijani nation based on common religious grounds and strong diplomatic connections. Pakistan’s government always showed its high determination to support Azerbaijan on the former Karabakh issue, whereas Baku-based political authorities always provided their unconditional support to Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
Thus, the two-sided governments share a common vision of regional peace and stability against the aggressive behaviours of their territorially adjoining nations, and this scenario has resulted in the formation of strong diplomatic bonds and active political coordination between Islamabad and Baku. It is pertinent to mention there the role of people-to-people contacts in the consistently progressing Pakistan-Azerbaijan bilateral relations and their explicit reflection in the evolving societal bonds between the two nations.
Pakistan actively supports Azerbaijan’s call for justice, highlighting Khojaly’s tragedy through academic and diplomatic efforts.
Pakistani nations share their solidarity with Azerbaijan’s international call for justice under a broader campaign titled “Justice for Khojaly”, and Pakistan’s mainstream educational institutions, independent research centres, and leading individual academics actively participate in the annual debates on the Khojaly massacre.
Pakistan’s leading universities arrange annually different academic seminars, informative lectures, and picture exhibitions to commemorate Azerbaijani sacrifices and inform the local people about the massacre while sensitizing the international community about Islamabad’s commitment to supporting the Azerbaijani government on the Khojlay genocide. The combined efforts of both nations have raised the issue at various multilateral platforms of the international community, and it has resulted in the resentment of some countries and the reluctant condemnation of others.
Despite some state-centric resolutions and official statements of a few governments, the quest to cultivate broader support on the issue is still inadequate. In this way, it is appropriate to say that the Khojaly genocide is internationally considered an unhealed wound of Azerbaijan, which every year communicates to the international community about the need to promote and uphold the fundamental values of international humanitarian law and its appropriate application in the South Caucasus region.
The Khojaly Genocide remains an unhealed wound, demanding global accountability to prevent future ethnic atrocities.
The Azerbaijani government’s annual campaigns to highlight internationally the unheard voices of Khojaly demand the proponents of peace and justice to hold the Armenian leaders accountable for this historical massacre. The adequate responses of the international community could prevent the further probabilities of such incidents’ repetition in the world.
The author is an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations, NUML, Islamabad. He can be reached at arehman@numl.edu.pk. https://www.numl.edu.pk/faculty/446
