Azernews.Az

BAKU – An appeal condemning the Khojaly massacre committed by Armenians against Azeris in 1992 will be sent to a UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, a group implementing the Justice for Khojaly campaign has said.

Elshad Iskandarov, secretary-general of the Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYFDC), said on Monday that petitions being signed online and by other means as part of the campaign will be forwarded to the Hague court this year.

"The Hague tribunal is of great importance for providing a legal assessment to the Khojaly tragedy," Iskandarov said.

He said that while one of the goals of the Justice for Khojaly campaign is to collect legal evidence and expose distorted information concerning the massacre, another purpose is to foster a political basis for duly assessing the developments.

"This political basis is being prepared within our organization. OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] foreign ministers and parliamentary assembly have [already] passed such a decision. We are now working for another resolution to be issued by the OIC heads of state. If 57 of the 190 UN member states put forth political will, this will provide a substantial basis for a fair assessment of the genocide."

Iskandarov said research on the Khojaly massacre has been carried out and new documents revealed. "An objective report on the massacre will be drafted next year and submitted to international organizations."

This year, events are planned as part of the Justice for Khojaly campaign in a number of leading universities worldwide, he said.

"Flash-mob events will be held in a total of about 30 universities in Houston, Berlin and Potsdam. During these events some 100,000 signatures are to be collected."

Iskandarov said presentations of the campaign will be held in over 40 capitals and cities.

The campaign, which was launched in February 2009 at the initiative of Leyla Aliyeva, the Forum’s senior coordinator, aims to inform the world community about the tragedy and condemn the atrocities both on the nationwide and international scale. It is ongoing with the contribution of hundreds of volunteers and covers over 30 OIC member states, European and Latin American countries.

Thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were slain by Armenian armed forces in the Khojaly region with the support of Russian troops on February 25-26, 1992. 613 people were brutally killed, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly. 1,275 were taken captives, while 487 became handicapped and 190 went missing.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a cease-fire in 1994. 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, has been under Armenian occupation since then. OSCE-brokered peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.