Azernews.Az

The Azerbaijani parliament has passed a document on the Khojaly genocide committed by Armenian armed forces during the Karabakh war at its sitting on Friday.

The decision condemns the atrocities committed in Khojaly by Armenian butchers in 1992, and the Khojaly genocide was called "a black stain on the conscience of humanity".

The MPs noted that Azerbaijani investigators have identified 39 individuals who committed crimes during the attack on Khojaly, a town located in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh region.

The paper also says the activities carried out by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation under the campaign "Justice for Khojaly" have been expanding year on year and once again endorses the previous decisions of the Milli Majlis labeling the Khojaly massacre as genocide.

The decision emphasized that the Azerbaijani MPs, during their foreign visits and while participating in the functions of international organizations, should ensure broadly conveying the realities about the acts of genocide suffered by the Azerbaijanis in the last hundred years, including the Khojaly tragedy. For this purpose they must effectively and fully use the capabilities of the Milli Majlis working groups on inter-parliamentary relations, it said.

The document said law enforcement agencies should find all those who were involved in the perpetration of the Khojaly massacre and step up efforts to bring the culprits to justice.

The decision also says relevant government and non-state actors, including NGOs, are instructed to disseminate information about the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and join efforts to expose the false Armenian propaganda on the issue.

During the attack on Khojaly on February 25-26, 1992, 613 people, including underage children and women, were brutally killed and hundreds of others disabled. 1,275 people were captured, including 150 whose fate is still unknown, and 5,379 people were ousted from their homes.

The Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 over Armenia’s territorial claims. The ensuing war claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced up to a million Azerbaijanis. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks, brokered by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.