Azerbaijan: Khojaly Massacre

Baroness Cox Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend caught me somewhat unawares by the succinctness of his question. Of course we recognise the events of the tragic episode that took place in Azerbaijan, as I said. I stress that there is no violent solution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We urge both sides to engage internationally. We support the engagement that takes place between those countries and the organisations that facilitate it, such as the OSCE.

[Baroness Cox (CB)]

My Lords, I was present in Nagorno-Karabakh many times during the war in the 1990s and can testify to the reality of events at Khojaly, a town used by the Azeris to fire so many missiles on the capital, Stepanakert, that it would have been annihilated if the Armenians had not taken control of Khojaly. They gave advance notice of their attack and requested that the Azeris allow civilians to evacuate. When the attack began, they saw Armenian civilians still present. They stopped fighting and asked the Azeris to allow safe passage, but Azeris mingled with Armenians and both sides suffered deaths. The Armenians gave the Azeris permission to collect their dead, but the Azeris mutilated captured Armenian prisoners.

Is the Minister aware of the Azeri bias in much of the media coverage of the Karabakh war, not only on Khojaly but on other events, such as the massacre by Azerbaijan at the nearby village of Maraga? I visited Maraga many times. I went first when the homes were still burning. The charred remains of corpses and the vertebrae of beheaded Armenians were still on the ground. Does the Minister agree that rewriting history has serious implications for future developments in the countries involved?