We can’t consider the tragedy in Maragha as a war because Maragha was not a military post, but rather a peaceful settlement.
It should be considered as a crime against humanity for which there is no expiration date for punishment and the perpetrators must be brought to justice sooner or later by Karabagh, as well as the international community.
This was what president of the Karabagh National Assembly foreign relations committee Vahran Atanesyan said on April 10 during a press conference dedicated to the “Tragic events in Maragh on April 10, 1992”.
In his speech, V. Atanesyan said that in 1992, in the early hours of the morning at 5 a.m., the Maragha village located in the Martakert region of Karabagh was attacked by missiles sent from Azerbaijan’s Mirbashir region (present day Tartar region) for three hours. Afterwards, Azerbaijani armed forces, which were supported by the subdivision of the 4th army of Gyanja allocated in Azerbaijan by the former Soviet Union, invaded the Maragha village and massacred the people living there. Nearly 100 people died, mainly women, children and elderly. The Azerbaijani armed forces took tens of hundreds of hostages with them as they left the village, some of which managed to escape while the rest remain missing (According to V. Atanesyan, there are about 30 missing hostages).
“As of April 10, 1992, there were more than 3,000 people living in Maragha. Currently, only 300 people who have survived the massacres live in the Nor Maragha village. In other words, more than 2 and a half thousand people are living abroad and don’t have the opportunity to come back to their homeland. The Maragha village is currently under the control of Azerbaijani armed forces, as well as the villages of Margushavan, Karmiravan, Seysula, etc. The Karabagh authorities have stated that the Karabagh conflict resolution must include Karabagh’s territorial integrity, especially the northern section of the Martakert region, which has been the region with the most agriculture and one of the most developed substructures of the republic. As a result of the tragic events in Maragha and the war in progress, five wine factories, nearly 30,000 vineyards have been destroyed, and the mother water route of Karabagh has also been ruined,” says Vahram.
V. Atanesyan also said with a feeling of pity that Armenia hadn’t done anything about the economic losses caused by Azerbaijan, as well as the evidence of the tragic crime committed by the Azerbaijani authorities and the armed forces.
Recently, Karabagh’s National Assembly has formed a temporary committee on reviewing the facts of the actual crime. V. Atanesyan hopes that the committee will be able to summarize the tragic events in Maragha before the end of the year, as well as present the facts of the atrocities committed in the territory of Karabagh to Armenian society, the international community, as well as the parliaments of the member countries of the OSCE Minsk Group. Atanesyan says that this must be done within the framework of Azerbaijan’s efforts to bring cases against spies of the Karabagh Defense Army and several significant individuals who fought in the Karabagh liberation war.
“We must be ready to present the facts to the international community not as a counterattack to Azerbaijan’s anti-propaganda, but so that the international community will know who, when and how were the people massacred and who was it that decided to took advantage of the war in order to organize ethnic-cleansing. Azerbaijan has led this kind of politics for years through peace when Karabagh was still located in Azerbaijan as an autonomous region. This politics reached the climax in 1991, when Azerbaijan let go of the opportunity to solve matters peacefully with the people of Karabagh and declared a war on Karabagh. So, the attacks on the border shouldn’t be looked at as the result of the politics led by the Karabagh authorities, but rather as the result of Azerbaijan’s aggression and keeping the people of Karabagh under foreign control as a means of defending the country. If we have the studies conducted by the National Assembly temporary committee, we can then present them to the international community and start the propaganda so that the international community also knows about Karabagh’s national-liberation struggle. Basically, the fact that the Karabagh conflict may be an honor for Azerbaijan, while it is a question of survival on the homeland for the people of Karabagh,” said the president of the Karabagh National Assembly foreign relations committee.
During the conference, the “Koltso” war was also touched upon and according to V. Atanesyan, both the National Assembly and the political parties must organize events to the 15th anniversary of the war.
“I don’t think that we have the chance today to bring the perpetrators to justice, but if we are going towards international recognition of Karabagh’s independence, then we must start raising the issue by announcing the names of the perpetrators one by one, especially since it’s no secret to anyone. These issues must not only be raised by announcements, but also by an official document, especially since today there are people living in Karabagh who have experienced living in those concentration camps, have been arrested as a result of the “Koltso” war and have been kept as prisoners in different prisons around Azerbaijan. There are even people who have been sentenced by Azerbaijani courts, but have later been released and turned into military hostages. We must also collect evidence regarding those people, analyze it and have an official document, which will help us prove that this struggle does not end in itself, that it started in our homeland in order to defend our right to live. We have not and aren’t digging a hole for ourselves. The only guarantee that we have to live here peacefully is the self-defense of our country with its security and national attributes,” said the president of the committee in closing.