Azernews.Az

The Armenian diaspora in the Czech Republic has prevented the country’s town of Lidice twinning with Azerbaijan’s Khojaly, a proposal made due to both towns’ being subjected to massacres, an Azerbaijani lawmaker said Wednesday.
Gular Ahmadova said the initiative had been put forth by Elshan Nazarov, a representative of the Azerbaijani community in the Czech Republic. Azerbaijani MPs had been invited to the event he organized, and Ahmadova took part in it. Initially, it was announced that a street in Lidice would be named after Khojaly. However, the Armenian lobby hampered the materialization of the initiative.
Ahmadova believes the lack of proper organization also contributed to the failure of the initiative. She said the Azerbaijani community in the Eastern European country did not make a concerted effort to reach the goal, and no assistance was sought from the Azerbaijani government and parliament members. Following the meeting, the lawmakers had offered their assistance to Nazarov.
"I believe that in a year’s time we will achieve realization of this initiative," Ahmadova added.
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 Russian troops. 613 people were brutally killed, while 1,275 taken captive, 487 became handicapped and 150 remain missing. Overall, the war claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about one 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.
Lidice, located just north-west of Prague, is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which was completely destroyed by German forces in the spring of 1942. On June 10, 1942, all 192 men over 16 years of age from the village were murdered on the spot by the Germans. The rest of the population was sent to Nazi concentration camps.*