Azernews.Az

The parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Islamic Conference (OIC) has labeled the Khojaly massacre committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis in 1992 as a crime against humanity in a resolution adopted on Sunday at the sixth OIC session held in Kampala, Uganda, according to the Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYFDC) Istanbul headquarters.
The resolution, passed under the Justice for Khojaly international campaign, initiated by Leyla Aliyeva, the Forum’s senior coordinator for inter-cultural dialog, terms the massacre as "the Armenian armed forces’ mass killings of civilian population".
The resolution voices support for the Justice for Khojaly campaign, urging the parliaments of the 51 OIC member states to recognize the gruesome developments as a crime against humanity and to support the campaign both on the nationwide and international scale.
Elshad Iskandarov, the Forum’s secretary-general, commented that the Kampala resolution is the first international document recognizing the Khojaly tragedy as a crime against mankind.
"Given that the OIC parliamentary union comprises a fourth of the world’s parliaments and is one of the biggest inter-parliamentary entities in the world, the [use of] this term will pave the way for a new qualitative stage in international recognition of the Khojaly tragedy as being a part of the policy of genocide pursued by Armenian nationalists against the Azerbaijani people and holding those responsible for this crime legally accountable."
The Justice for Khojaly campaign, which was launched in February 2009, is ongoing with the contribution of hundreds of volunteers in over 30 countries. The initiative aims to inform the world community about the tragedy and achieve granting it due political assessment on the world stage.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war in the early 1990s. On February 25-26, 1992, Armenian forces attacked unarmed civilians in Khojaly with the support of the Russian troops. 613 people were brutally killed, while 1,275 taken captives, 487 became handicapped and 150 remain missing. Overall, the war claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenia has been occupying over 20% of Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized territory since then. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.*