

Do you have a terminal cold? Karabag is 'Turkish' and will remain 
'Turkish'. Here we are, almost at the end of the 20th century, and 
a whole community, the Azeri Turks of x-Soviet Armenia and Karabag, 
is facing forced assimilation, torture and murder on one hand and 
forced exodus, expulsion and genocide on the other, all because 
of their ethnic and religious background. And one should ask herself: 
is the world community really so powerless? Where are all those human 
rights advocates? Where are all the decent people? Are we going to 
let this human tragedy go on and do nothing about it? The number
of Azeris murdered by the terrorist Armenian army and its savage
gangs is increasing. On the one hand they wish to distort the truth
and on the other, they beg mercy from Turkiye.

        The Age...Melbourne...6/3/92

        By Helen WOMACK  .... Agdam, Azerbaijan, Thursday

        The exact number of victims is still unclear,  but there can be 
        little  doubt that Azeri civilians were massacred  by  Armenian 
        fighters in the snowy mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh last week. 

        Refugees  from the enclave town of Khojaly,  sheltering in  the 
        Azeri border town of Agdam, give largely consistent accounts of 
        how  their  enemies  attacked their homes on the  night  of  25 
        February,    chased  those  who  fled  and  shot  them  in  the 
        surrounding forests. Yesterday, I saw 75  freshly dug graves in 
        one  cemetery  in  addition to four mutilated corpses  we  were 
        shown in the mosque when we arrived in Agdam late on Tuesday. I 
        also  saw women and children with bullet wounds in a  makeshift 
        hospital in a string of railway carriages. 

        Khojaly, an Azeri settlement in the enclave mostly populated by 
        Armenians,  had a population of about 6000. Mr.  Rashid Mamedov 
        Commander of Police in Agdam,  said  only about 500  escaped to 
        his  town.   " So where are the rest?".  Some might have  taken 
        prisoner, he said, or fled. Many bodies were still lying in the 
        mountains  because  the  Azeris were short  of  helicopters  to 
        retrieve them. He believed more than 1000 had perished, some of 
        cold in temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees. 

        One  refugee,  Rami Nasiru,  described how Khojaly residents at 
        first thought the attack was no more than the routine  shooting 
        to  which they had become accustomed in four years of conflict. 
        But  when  they  saw the Armenians with  a  convoy  of  armored 
        personnel carriers, they realised they could not hope to defend 
        themselves  with  machineguns and grenades,  and fled into  the 
        forests. In the small hours, the massacre started. 

        Mr.  Nasiru,  who believes his wife and two children were taken 
        prisoner,   repeated what many other refugees have said -  that 
        troops of the former Soviet army helped the Armenians to attack 
        Khojaly. "It is not my opinion, I saw it with my own eyes." 


Serdar Argic