The chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Department has issued an address to the international community to mark Azerbaijani Genocide Day, 31 March.
Sheikh ul-Islam Allashukur Pashazade said he was addressing all peace-loving people of the world, regardless of their religious, linguistic, racial or national identity, to inform them of the horrors suffered by the people of Azerbaijan over the past century, ANS PRESS reported.
He said there could be no justification for the actions of Armenian extremists and their accomplices, who had set their sights on the ancestral lands of Azerbaijan and committed crimes against Azerbaijanis four times in 100 years, according to the spokeswoman for the Caucasus Muslims Department, Rahima Dadasheva.
"These acts of genocide are a stain on the history of humanity, but unfortunately the actions of Armenian extremists have received no international legal assessment. Double standards, political expediency, distortion or indifference towards crimes against humanity are completely unacceptable," Dadasheva reported the sheikh as saying.
He said that impunity led to new crimes, citing as an example the Armenian occupation of a swathe of Azerbaijani territory, the deaths of innocent civilians, the expulsion of more than a million people from their homes and the failure to fulfil four UN resolutions on Karabakh.
The international community should know the bitter truth about the genocide committed against Azerbaijanis, which is documented in the archives, the sheikh said. Azerbaijan has been a victim both of aggression by Armenian extremists and of misinformation by the Armenian lobby throughout the world.
Referring to Armenia's position that the deaths of thousands of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16 constituted genocide, Pashazade said: "This country is constantly using the myth of the 'suffering of the Armenians' to justify their atrocities, massacres, military intervention in Azerbaijan and the seizure of our lands. The recognition of the false genocide, attempts to portray the instigators of the genocide as 'victims’ cause us great concern. Our call for a legal and political assessment to the Khojaly genocide have yet to be effective," he said.
The sheikh urged the international community not to remain indifferent towards the tragedies of the Azerbaijani people, to give a principled assessment to the legal acts of genocide and to show solidarity with Azerbaijan in a fair resolution of the Karabakh conflict.
"May God help you to distinguish truth from falsehood, and not deprive us of his mercy. Amen!" the sheikh's message concluded.
Thousands of Azerbaijanis were killed when Armenians went on the rampage in Baku and across Azerbaijan at the end of March 1918. The massacre started during the night of 30-31 March when Bolshevik troops, led by ethnic Armenian Stepan Shahumyan, massacred thousands of people in Baku. The parliament of the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic passed a decision to mark 31 March as Azerbaijani Genocide Day in 1919. President Heydar Aliyev issued a decree on 26 March 1998 that 31 March should be marked as Azerbaijani Genocide Day.
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