A Plea by an Armenian Student and Global Citizen
Talar Malakian | Mar 05, 2013 | Comments 5
The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” with acts that accompany that intent. As I read this online, I wondered about how the definition of genocide and ethnic cleansing is being debated right here on campus by a conflict that has made the abstract actual.
The conflict is felt by two student associations and ethnically-affiliated groups on campus who have hosted lectures about historically Armenian Nagorno-Karabagh’s independence and the current conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, along with one specific event in the Azerbaijani-Armenian War from 1988 to 1994 that Azerbaijan calls the Khojaly Massacre, which was the attack of a village with a large Azerbaijani population.
The war and a series of attacks began because Nagorno-Karabagh, supported by Armenia, proclaimed a de facto independence when Azerbaijan felt that the land belonged to them because of Stalin’s assignment of land in 1923.
We have to ask ourselves the following: Does the definition of genocide and ethnic cleansing apply to the Khojaly calamity?
Firstly, preceding the Khojaly calamity that occurred from February 25-26 in 1992, there were a series of anti-Armenian pogroms led by the Azerbaijanis called the Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku massacres. Each of these massacres was led by Azerbaijanis and took place between the time of 1988 and 1990, directly before the Khojaly event that Azerbaijan claims was an act of ethnic cleansing by Armenians. But even if we disregard these massacres and move on to the Khojaly massacre itself, there are several issues in calling the event ethnic cleansing.
During the time that the Khojaly calamity occurred, international sources point to the fact that Stepanakert, an Armenian town, was being shelled indiscriminately on a daily basis from Khojaly, Shushi and Janhasan. There were over 200,000 missiles fired from Khojaly. So did Azerbaijan anticipate that Armenians would not disarm Khojaly when they were being attacked?
And even then, why do international sources and Azerbaijani president Ayaz Mutalibov say that “the Armenians had, in any case, provided a corridor to let the civilians escape” when they could have shot them from a fortress called Askeran that they occupied that overlooks Khojaly, the very site that they were said to have “ethnically cleansed?” Why did Armenian troops allow civilians to reach another village by warning them in advance of an oncoming military assault, and why did the Azerbaijani government, who was aware of this attack, evacuate cattle before they evacuated their women and children?
Armenian troops warned Azerbaijan of their disarmament, even after being victims to a series of pogroms and attacks at the hands of the Azeris. They could have attacked but they allowed the civilians to escape. Is this ethnic cleansing?
Recently, the Azerbaijani government jailed and attacked a novelist for expressing sympathy for Armenians; promoted an Azerbaijani soldier for killing an Armenian in his sleep with an axe and exponentially increased their military spending while amplifying belligerent rhetoric against Armenia, threatening to shoot down civilian planes that fly into the Khojaly airport. All of these human rights violations stem from constructing an enemy out of a collective memory owned by the Azerbaijani government.
I call Azerbaijani students my brothers and sisters because we are global citizens of this world dedicated to fact, to truth, to justice, but I also wonder who has control over this collective memory of the Khojaly trauma?
At the last lecture hosted by the Azerbaijani Student Association, five armed security guards showed up and stood behind us because Armenian students were there, asking questions about Khojaly.
Azerbaijani peers, I mourn your losses and ours experienced during the time of this war. But I also ask that you question the blame you assign and question, as well as the very authority of the memories that have made me your enemy. Let’s speak for justice, but when we do, let’s also remember that justice can only be accompanied by the truth without fabrications, without physical force, without violations of our rights as human beings and global citizens.
Talar Malakian is a third-year English major. She can be reached at tmalakia@uci.edu.
Filed Under: Opinion
Following the conquest of the Caucuses by the Russian empire, many other Armenians from the Persian empire were encouraged to return to their ancestral homeland, Artsakh. While many Azerbaijanis left to the Persian empire since Karabakh khanate was now in control of the Russians instead of an Azer-Turkic ruler by the name of Khalil Khan. The word “return” is often omitted from Azerbaijani rhetoric.
Furthermore, there are many Armenians from Baku, Sumgait, and Maragha, that were forced to leave their homes. Are these hundreds of Armenians not displaced? or have they finally accepted history and reintegrated themselves into a new society on foreign soils where they are not subjected to oppression, harassment, and the threat to life?
You claim that Azerbaijanis have accepted Armenian suffering because a few individuals have served short sentences in prison following the Sumgait court trials. If Azerbaijanis have truly accepted Armenian suffering, then how does an entire nation, supported by their government, engage in a collective anti-Armenian sentiment? In recent news, when is the last time you heard of Armenians killing an Azerbaijani in their sleep and then being deemed a national hero? When is the last time Armenians offered a bounty to the ear of an Armenian writer portraying sympathy towards Azerbaijanis? You haven’t. Because it doesn’t exist. One peek into history and recent developments sheds light on the role of the oppressor and the oppressed in the Karabakh conflict, one does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand when basic human rights are being violated.
The Armenians too, mourn the loss of the individuals in Khojaly, both the Azerbaijanis and the Meskhetian Turks brought into Khojaly from Uzbekistan by Heydar Aliyev. But there are many unanswered questions in the Khojaly massacre. Surely it is more convenient to assign culpability to Armenian forces and use it as justification for a statewide anti-Armenian sentiment rather than look deeper and attempt to find the missing puzzles pieces. History is not a multi-faceted area of discipline. It stands true despite thousands of manipulations and opinions; and is immune to convenient methods of blind dogma and hatred. Dialogue between two groups can only take place when the veil of ignorance, hatred, and biased opinions are left at the door and history is assessed with the commitment to ultimate truth.
It’s often the case that the lack of knowledge about this conflict leads to passionate claims that are far from truth:
1) Several organizers of Sumgait riots were sentenced to execution by the Soviet and Azerbaijani courts. Information about at least two of those sentences and executions is in the Washington Post article here: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1291027.html
There is yet to be a courageous attempt to at least investigate the Khojaly matter in Armenia.
2) Deportations of Meskhetian Turks from Uzbekistan took place in 1989. Heydar Aliyev resigned from Soviet Politburo in 1987 and returned to power in Azerbaijan in 1993. So the claim that he somehow resettled Meskhetian Turks to Nagorno-Karabakh is factually false.
3) When Armenian field commander, Monte Melkonyan, describes his account of Khojaly Massacre and even names culprits (“The Arabo fighters had then unsheathed the knives they had carried on their hips for so long, and began stabbing”, Markar Melkonian. “My Brother’s Road”, p. 213), when Human Rights Watch repeatedly affirms that Armenian forces fired (at a close range) at civilians escaping Khojaly, there is nothing to dispute. That is at least if the claim of compassion or mourning for the victims of the other side is truly genuine…
4) The angry response to Aylisli’s book is unhealthy and disturbing to many Azerbaijanis as well. But sadly natural sentiment in Azerbaijani society. It is a direct consequence of the plight of 600,000 Azerbaijanis living in refugee settlements due to the ongoing Armenian military occupation (ditto, recognized as such by the UN and the rest of international community) for over 20 years. Denial of Armenian involvement in Khojaly, despite the magnitude of facts at hand, is yet another reason of this sentiment.
Leaving all the facts aside, let’s not forget that Aylisli is Azerbaijani writer, and at this point, an Armenian writer who would follow the same suit of courage against own antagonistic sentiment is yet to be seen.
And I fully agree that dialog “can only take place when the veil of ignorance, hatred, and biased opinions are left at the door and history is assessed with the commitment to ultimate truth”. That is exactly what Azerbaijani student group at UCI accomplished last week.
I would just like to make a point of continuous attempts to use Markar Melkonian’s book as a source. I think it’s only necessary to address this issue before it is mentioned again, out of context. Markar Melkonian’s book about Monte Melkonian is in first-person narrative. When a person writes a memoir about another person’s life, in first person narrative, that automatically makes Monte Melkonian a fictional character in a memoir that someone else wrote. I do not mean to say that “My Brother’s Road” does not have real accounts but the line between reality and fiction has been blurred because of that decision. You can ask English professors, writers, and journalists, frankly anyone who has studied composition and writing extensively. Politicians and lobbyists do not count, clearly. Wikipedia source even states, “On many historical topics there are memoirs and oral histories that specialists consult with caution, for they are filled with stories that people wish to remember—and usually recall without going back to the original documentation. Editors should use them with caution.” Using “My Brother’s Road” as a source for the basis of a real argument, is heavily flawed. It is not a journalistic account, it is a memoir. Creative nonfiction and fiction are not solid references when discussing ethnic cleansing outside of the context of the work itself. First person narratives, if told by someone else, are not valid sources to prove ethnic cleansing in a real world context. They are simply memoirs to be discussed as memoirs, and characters to be discussed as characters. Pointing out a quote from a memoir that could very well have fictional elements, does not justify an argument for ethnic cleansing.
Wikipedia may not be trusted, so here is another article that can clear things up. Googling memoir will give you the same responses. So using the memoir, is in fact, a disputable move. http://www.solsticelitmag.org/content/memory-fact-imagination-research-memoirs-hybrid-personality/
It is encouraging to see that the UCI audience has now got a unique opportunity to listen to both sides of this painful conflict between the two neighboring nations. Armenians and Azerbaijanis shared a lot in common throughout history and the Mountainous Karabakh region has been the very essence of that historic commonality and coexistence for centuries. In fact, prior to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the early 19th century, Karabakh had been a semi-independent khanate under Persian suzerainty, ruled by an Azeri Turkic-speaking Muslim dynasty with support of local Christian and Muslim populations.
But sadly, there is a reality of conflict that needs to be resolved as over 600,000 Azerbaijanis await return to their homes for over 20 years. The 1988 Sumgait killings of 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis and the 1992 Khojaly Massacre of 613 Azerbaijanis, including 106 women and 63 children, were the two most painful chapters of the Karabakh conflict. While other atrocities took place on both sides, these two tragedies left the most significant imprints on collective memories in Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in order to seek any peaceful solution, it is very important for peoples on both sides to recognize what happened. While the Azerbaijani society had accepted the pain of Armenian suffering in Sumgait, through the relevant court process, Armenian society is yet to accept what happened in Khojaly. Apart from the arguable claims of intent, the following 1997 letter from Human Rights Watch settles any controversy over Khojaly in a very concise and impartial manner:
http://www.hrw.org/news/1997/03/23/response-armenian-government-letter-town-khojaly-nagorno-karabakh
That being said, there are understandably many passionate differences in opinions. But I think the presentations, such as the one organized by AzSA last week, create a unique window of opportunity for pursuing a sincere dialog between the two student groups. Never mind armed security, it may have been the right choice made by the UCI administration given the passions over the subject, when both presenters and attendees took time to prepare printed flyers with their own vision of story for distribution at this event.
What matters is how can this opportunity be used to establish a level of trust when the two student groups can engage in an exchange and, perhaps, seek solution that politicians and peoples across the ocean cannot yet see. That may have ultimately been an intent behind AzSA’s presentation touching on Khojaly and Sumgait.
Finally, for the sake of fairness, it would be great to see the opinion of Azerbaijani students, especially those directly affected by the conflict, published in the New University as well.