The future of Karabakh

Originally posted by Scorpius I am sorry but you are wrong. I give a damn.

thats good! but I am afraid you are in the minority

Look, there is no point for me to argue with you. You can believe whatever you want to believe...

but you are still making a mockery out of yourself when claiming that 613 Azeries dead in Khojali is a Genocide and more than a million Armenian deaths is not.

And for the last time, Azeri websites dont qualify as proof...(I can spread propaganda; however I choose not to...shall I?)

Originally posted by bulldog Who on Earth gives you the right to claim who is and isn't in the minority have you travelled round the world and asked everyone in the world personally

what the hell? Who on Earth gives you the right to tell me what to say and what not to say in a public forum?


Edited by mamikon - 15-Jul-2006 at 10:49

Originally posted by mamikon for bulldog but you are still making a mockery out of yourself when claiming that 613 Azeries dead in Khojali is a Genocide and more than a million Armenian deaths is not.

Originally posted by bulldog Thomas Goltz saw the devastation of the ethnic cleansing of Khodjali by the Armenian forces.

About the book: have you read it? (sorry for silly question). Well I have, and it is sitting right next to me as I write this.

First of all I dont see how a book can be taken seriously if the author has visited only one of the warring parties (Azerbaijan), stemming from this, an objective account on the war would be hard to write, no?

By the way, that tricolored map was given to the author by the Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs; so much for the integrity of writers...

Nevertheless, there are some segments in the book that will disturb you. For example, in many instances he mentioned the Armenian Genocide, and no he doesnt call it "Falsified Genocide" or "so-called Genocide" or the "Armenian hoax" he called it what it is: a Genocide.

Now what do you think of the book?


Edited by mamikon - 15-Jul-2006 at 12:39

What would you like to know?

he did not witness the war crimes (both by Armenians and Azeries) because he was not at the battle zones. However he visited the battle zones and saw the bodies. The book goes deeper into the political life of Azerbaijan during those times than about actual Nagorno Karabakh itself.

According to him; The Azeri government claimed that on the days of the Khojali massacre (UN has not recognized if the massacre has been carried out by Armenians or Azeries) , an Armenian attack failed miserably and only two Azeri soldiers died. The author states that he had trouble getting through the "Azeri lies" (direct quote) and propaganda, to tell of the bodies he saw when passing through, and that the attention of media came weeks later.

"The government and press in Baku didn't exactly assist our efforts to get the story out. While we had been off in Aghdam trying to break the news, the presidential spokesman was claiming that Khojali's feisty defenders had beaten back an Armenian attack and that the Azeris had suffered only two casualties. They were pitching it as just an ordinary night in Mountainous Karabakh. We knew differently, but it was the three of us against the Azerbaijani State propaganda machine. "

yes, that quote is exactly from the book, (page 125) in the version I have.

Scores, hundreds, possibly even a thousand had been slaughtered in a turkey-shoot of civilians and their handful of defenders. Aside from counting every corpse, there was no way to tell how many had died. Most of the bodies remained inaccessible, in the no-man's land between the lines that had become a killing zone and a picnic for crows."

what is your web source for this quote, and the two other quotes, I cant find them in the book.

As I have said, the book is biased. Since it almost only talks of only Azeri politics, Azeri victims and etc...
    

Edited by mamikon - 15-Jul-2006 at 16:09

Thomas Goltz is not a Turk, he was actually there the mass-ethnic cleansing was going on, he is a well known recognised journalist. What now, your saying that Goltz is "propoganda" a "lier" just because he doesn't paint the Armenians as lovely angels and Turks as evil monsters.

These views of Mamikon are the by=product of the Armenian cult of hatred and racism against Turks.

claiming that 613 Azeries dead in Khojali is a Genocide and more than a million Armenian deaths is not.

How typical, create an alternate version of events and think you can get away with it because others may not know about it.

The total death toll in Khodjali is still unknown, new mass graves keep being found, infact from prior to that time, recently there was an investigation into 3,000 mountain Jews who were massacred by Armenian forces.

Yevda Abramov: "Mass killings of Jews in Azerbaijan by Armenian forces"

http://www.today.az/news/society/26185.html

"More than 3000 Mountain Jews were killed by Armenians during 1918-1919"

http://www.today.az/news/politics/25410.html
    
In addition, 25,000 people were killed in Azerbaycan by Armenians. Also, just because Armenia lost people in a war does not give them the right to go around slaughtering others and then turn round and say, you can't complain because Armenians were killed 100 years ago.

What a perverse, sick mentallity that it. In the years leading up to WW1 the descendants of todays Turkey lost 5 million people and were left with 6 million refugees. According to your logic they have the right to kill who they like because they were suffering.



Thomas Goltz did see massacres and war-crimes by Armenians.


It was there in the foothills of the mountains even within sight of safety, that the greatest horror awaited them - a gauntlet of lead and fire.

"They just kept shooting and shooting and shooting," sobbed a woman named Raisa Aslanova. She said her husband and son-in-law were killed right in front of her eyes. Her daughter was still missing.

Scores, hundreds, possibly even a thousand had been slaughtered in a turkey-shoot of civilians. Aside from counting every corpse, there was no way to tell how many had died. Most of the bodies remained inaccessible, in the no-man's land between the lines that had become a killing zone and a picnic for crows.

One thousand slaughtered in a single night? It seemed impossible. But when we began cross-referencing, the wild claims about the extent of the killing began to look all too true. The local religious leader in Aghdam, Imam Sadigh Sadighov, broke down in tears as he tallied the names of the registered dead on an abacus. There were 677 that day, but the number did not include those missing and presumed dead, nor those victims whose entire families had been wiped out and thus had no one to register them. The number 677 represented only the number of confirmed dead by the survivors who had managed to reach Aghdam and were physically able to fulfill, however imperfectly, the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.

Elif Kaban of Reuters was stunned into giddiness. My wife, Hijran, was numb. Photographer Oleg Litvin fell into a catatonic state and would only shoot pictures when I pushed him in front of the subject: corpses, graves, and the wailing women who were gouging their cheeks with their nails. The job required stomach. Now was the time to work - to document and report: a massacre had occurred, and the world had to know about it.

We scoured the town, stopping repeatedly at the hospital, the morgue and the ever-growing graveyards. We moved out to the edges of the defensive perimeter to meet the straggling survivors stumbling in. Then we would rush back to the hospital to check on those recently admitted who had been wounded. Then back to the morgue to witness truckloads of bodies being brought in for identification and ritual washing before burial.

I searched for familiar faces and thought I saw some but could not be sure. One corpse was identified as a young veterinarian who had been shot through the eyes at point-blank range. I tried to remember if I had ever met him, but could never be sure. Other bodies, stiffened by rigor mortis, seemed to speak of execution: with their arms thrown up as if in permanent surrender. A number of heads lacked hair, as if the corpses had been scalped. It was not a pretty day.


Towards evening, we returned to the government guesthouse in the middle of town searching for a telephone. There we met an exhausted Tamerlan Garayev. A native of Aghdam, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament was one of the few government officials of any sort that I found there. Tamerlan was interrogating two Turkmen deserters from the Stepanakert-based 366th Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Russian Interior Ministry forces that had descended on Khojali the week before. The last missing link of the tragedy suddenly fit into place: not only had the doomed town been assaulted by the Armenians, but the Russians had been undeniably involved as well.

"Talk, talk!" Tamerlan demanded, as the two men stared at us.
"We ran away because the Armenian and Russian officers were beating us because we were Muslims," one of the men, named Agha Mohammad Mutif, explained. "We just wanted to return home to Turkmenistan."
"Then what happened?" Tamerlan wanted to know.

"Then they attacked the town," the other explained. "We recognized vehicles from our unit."
The two had tried to flee along with everyone else in town and were helping a group of women and children escape through the mountains when they were discovered by the Armenians and the 366th.
"They opened fire and at least twelve men in our group were killed," Mutif recounted. "After that, we just ran and ran."

Could such a thing have really happened: a Russian-backed assault by Armenians on an Azeri town, which resulted in up to 1,000 dead?

This was news. But as we started to file our stories, we became aware of something very strange. No one seemed interested in the story. Apparently, the idea that the roles of the good guys had been reversed was too much: Armenians slaughtering Azeris?

"You're suggesting that more people died in this single attack in Karabakh than the total number that we have reported killed over the past four years?" observed BBC's Moscow correspondent when I tipped him on the bloodbath.
"That's impossible," he replied.
"Take a look at Reuters!"
"There's nothing on the wire."

Indeed, there wasn't. Although Elif Kaban had been churning out copy on her portable Telex, nothing was appearing on the wires. Either someone was spiking her copy, or was rolling it into a larger, anodyne regional report of "conflicting allegations".


If you want to read other reports



The Times, 2 March 1992

Corpses Litter Hills In Karabakh

(Anatol Lieven Comes Under
Fire While Flying To Investigate
The Mass Killings Of Refugees By
Armenian Troops)

As we swooped low over the snow-covered hills of Nagorno-Karabagh we saw the scattered corpses. Apparently, the refugees had been shot down as they ran. An Azerbaijani film of the places we flew over, shown to journalists afterwards, showed dozens of corpses lying in various parts of the hills.

As many As 1000 have died in a mass killings of Azerbaijani's fleeing from the town of Khodjaly, seized by Armenians last week. A further 4,000 are believed to be wounded, frozen to death or missing.

The civilian helicopter�s job was to land in the mountains and pick up bodies at sites of the mass killings.

The civilian helicopter picked up four corpses, and it was during this and a previous mission that an Azerbaijani cameraman filmed the several dozen bodies on the hillsides.

Back at the airfield in Agdam, we took a look at the bodies the civilian helicopter had picked up. Two old men a small girl were covered with blood, their limbs contorted by the cold and rigor mortis. They had been shot.



Boston Sunday Globe
21 November1993

by Jon Auerbach
Globe Correspondent

CHAKHARLI, Azerbaijan�The truckloads of scared and lost chilthen, the sobbing mothers, the stench of sickness and the sea of blank faces in this mud-covered refugee camp obscure the deeper issue of why tens of thousands of Azeris have fled here.

What we see now is a systematic destruction of every village in their way, said one senior US official. It�s one of the most disgusting things we�ve seen.

It�s vandalism, the US official said. The idea that there is an aggressive intent in a sound conclusion.

The United Nations estimates that thre are more than 1 million refugees in Azerbaijan, roughly one seventh of the former Soviet republic�s entire population. Thousands who fled to neighboring Iran are being slowly repatriated to refugee camps already bursting at the seams. But because of the Karabakh Armenians� policy of burning villages, relief organizations say there is no hope that the Azeris could return home anytime soon.

At Chakharli, about 10 miles from Iran, more than 10,000 refugees are crammed into a makeshift tent city. Aziz Azizova, 33, arrived in the Iranian run camp about three weeks ago, after she and her five children were forced to flee their home in the village of Buik-Merjan.

I left my village with nothing, not even my shoes, she said. You see how our children are living? Some of them are living right in the mud.

Azizova, like thousands of others, escaped by fleeing across the Arax River into neighboring Iran. The UN estimates that around 300 Azeris, mainly women and children, drowned in the river�s currents.

One of the people who did make it across was Samaz Mamedova, a 40-year-old accountant. Sitting with friends in tent No. 566 on a recent day, Mamedova explained how the Armenians seized her village in less than a half hour, forcing the entire population toward the river in a chaotic scramble for survival.




Armenia will have to answer to its crimes and genocide in the region, they ethnically cleansed parts of Karabag and slaughtered tens of thousands of people.

Its about time Armenia owns up and stops its illegal occupations and pays compensation to the suffering.
    

Edited by Bulldog - 15-Jul-2006 at 16:21

to Scorpius

well...I would have advised you to buy "Black Garden", the reasons for which I gave you above, but its your decision (its also cheaper). The quote in my signature is from that book actually.

I can also give you a multitude of Armenian propaganda (like bulldog here has done for Azeries) but I see no point of polluting this thread with senseless information as he has done.

@ bulldog

Once again bulldog, quoting an Azeri source about Armenians is not a really intelligent decision...

you still havent answered my question (as always):Thomas Goltz (I am aware he is not a Turk) mentions the Armenian Genocide, and calls it a Genocide. Do you now believe that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 is a Genocide?

Or are you just going to pick information from a book that only fall with your take on events.

Jews killed by Armenians? classical..before it was Armenians killed Turks, then Armenians killed Kurds, then Armenians killed Circassians and now Armenians kill Jews? whats next?

The number of deaths in Khojali is known, and it is 613. Once again, you believe that 613 deaths of Azeries qualifies as Genocide and a million Armenians deaths does not?

By the way, nice copy and paste job. Your whole italicized post about Goltz's account of events can be found in this Azeri site:

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai101_folder/101_articles/101_goltz_article.html
    
    
    

Edited by mamikon - 15-Jul-2006 at 16:56

Originally posted by mamikon to Scorpius well...I would have advised you to buy "Black Garden", the reasons for which I gave you above, but its your decision (its also cheaper).

 

Thanks, I read the reviews. The book seems to approach to the problem from different angles. Roots, politics, geography, etc..

Seems to be a good reading.

 

Originally posted by mamikon Jews killed by Armenians? classical..before it was Armenians killed Turks, then Armenians killed Kurds, then Armenians killed Circassians and now Armenians kill Jews? whats next?

 

mamikon there are people who believe Armenians killed Jews during Hitler's regime. I remember once a friend of mine told me that it was the Armenians who made Hitler believe in such a ridiculous idea of being pure and superior as a race. If I am not wrong, Hitler believed that Armenians and Germans are the Aryans and they both belong to a superior race. At that time my friend (who is a Jew ) was talking about some Armenian elite forces in Hitler's army doing the dirty jobs for him.

And I am telling you what an individual soul believes.

Do not get me wrong and I mean No offense to Armenian people or anybody else.

As one of my professor said once, people kill for their beliefs. It is not important what they believe is logical, correct or wrong (with respect to universal values or the facts).

Edited by Scorpius - 15-Jul-2006 at 17:31

Originally posted by Scorpius mamikon there are people who believe Armenians killed Jews during Hitler's regime. I remember once a friend of mine told me that it was the Armenians who made Hitler believe in such a ridiculous idea of being pure and superior as a race. If I am not wrong, Hitler believed that Armenians and Germans are the Aryans and they both belong to a superior race. At that time my friend (who is a Jew ) was talking about some Armenian elite forces in Hitler's army doing the dirty jobs for him.

Actually, the Holocaust was supposed to incorporate Armenians also. And Hitler by no means liked Armenians. The only reason Armenians were not included in the Holocaust was because of Garegin Njdeh, (who is considered a hero in Armenia). He was arrested when he came back to USSR in 1944, on charges of colloborating with Germans (and thus saving Armenians who resided in Germany and France).

bulldog, whats your source about Drastamat Kanayan. He was an Armenian hero, during WWI...did his best to save the remaining Armenian population during the Armenian Genocide

    

Edited by mamikon - 15-Jul-2006 at 17:45