MP: Armenia must not forget war crimes it committed in Karabakh war
By Vafa Ismayilova
Azerbaijani MP has said that Armenia should not forget war crimes it committed against Azerbaijani civilians during the first and second Karabakh wars.
MP Rasim Musabayov made the remarks while commenting on Armenian MP Edmon Marukyan's calls at the April session of the PACE demanding from international organizations to condemn Azerbaijan for the Military Trophy Park opened in Baku on April 12.
The Military Trophy Park displays the Armenian military equipment taken as a trophy during the war and gives information about Yerevan’s war crimes against Azerbaijani civilians.
Armenia's war crimes
“Azerbaijan can lay out hundreds of real evidence of Armenian atrocities that took place during the first Karabakh war against the photo of a wax figure [of an Armenian serviceman] in the Military Trophy Park. Armenians should not forget that all the war crimes they committed during the 44-day war were also recorded and documented,” Musabayov said in an interview with Day.az.
Commenting on the figures of chained Armenian soldiers in the museum, Musabayov reminded that the soldiers were not chained in captivity, but they were chained during the battle by their own commanders to machine guns so that they would not abandon their positions.
“This was reflected in the composition of the Military Trophy Park. A bad example taken by the Armenians from the experience of the First World War, but Marukyan should blame for this not the Azerbaijanis, but his [country’s] barbaric military command.”
The MP stressed that Armenia, which committed the Khojaly genocide, bloody ethnic cleansing on its own and Azerbaijani territories and completely destroyed everything on Azerbaijan's formerly occupied lands had no place in the Council of Europe and other European structures from the very beginning.
“The price of Marukyan's appeal to civilization, humanism and morality is worthless. After all, he was silent... when Armenia’s ex-presidents [Robert] Kocharyan and [Serzh] Sargsyan, while still being field commanders, killed 612 Azerbaijanis in Khojaly, including many women, children and old people. Marukyan was silent when from the rostrum of the same PACE Robert Kocharyan, who was apparently elected Armenia’s president as a reward for his atrocities against Azerbaijanis, massive ethnic cleansing, robberies and murders, without any embarrassment, publicly voiced the fascist thesis ‘about the ethnic incompatibility of Armenians and Azerbaijanis’," he said.
Musabayov stressed that Marukyan was not at all indignant at the war crimes committed by Armenian generals during the recent 44-day war, when the peaceful quarters of Ganja and Barda, located a hundred kilometres away from the battle zone, were subjected to missile attacks from the Armenian territory.
"For Marukyan's information, about a hundred civilians died there, including women, children and the elderly, and more than 400 were injured,” Musabayov said.
The MP said in order to turn to law, morality and humanism it is necessary to observe them and not to speculate with false statements.
The construction of the Military Trophy Park started upon the presidential order in January, following Azerbaijan’s decisive victory in the Second Karabakh War in November.
The war that lasted from September 27 to November 8 saw Azerbaijan liberate its territories that had been under the Armenian occupation for around 30 years.
Some of Armenia’s military equipment, including remains of the Iskander missile that Armenia used in Shusha after Azerbaijan liberated the city, are among exhibits.
Around 300 exhibits, including about 150 heavy equipment, tanks, combat vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft missile systems, small arms, military transport are on display in the park.
Exhibits in the park also give information about Armenia’s war crimes, missile attacks on Azerbaijani civilians in areas far from the conflict zone.
Among the exhibits is the composition that reads "Karabakh is Azerbaijan!" and made of license plates of more than 2,000 cars. The license plates had earlier been displayed during the Victory Parade held in Baku on December 10.
Located in Baku’s Khatai district, the park covers an area of five hectares.
The 44-day war between Azerbaijan and Armenia from late September to early November in 2020 ended with the signing of a trilateral peace deal by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders.
The peace agreement stipulated the return of Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Kalbajar, Aghdam and Lachin regions. Before the signing of the deal, the Azerbaijani army had liberated around 300 villages, settlements, city centres and historic Shusha city. The Azerbaijani army declared a victory against the Armenian troops. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.
--
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz