A SYMPHONY OF DEATH

Nothing spreads faster than bad news. In just this way, the whole world learnt about a terrible crime in a small Azerbaijani town, 17 years ago. This was Xocali, a town whose name was to be linked with Khatyn, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other cities which survived the bestial crimes of the 20th century.

On the night of 26 February 1992, Armenian armed formations, supported by the 366 motorized infantry regiment of the Russian army, based in the town of Stepanakert (now Xankandi and still occupied by the Armenians), wiped a whole town off the map, not sparing even the elderly, women or children.

This was not a crime that could be concealed. Even the Armenians themselves did not try to do so at first. This is how one of the main organizers of the bloody carnage, Serzh Sargsyan, who now heads Armenia, boasted about his ability to kill civilians: "Before Xocali, the Azerbaijanis thought that they could joke with us, they thought that the Armenians were not capable of raising their hands against the civilian population. We managed to break this (stereotype). This is what happened." These words by a leader of the Armenian terrorists were quoted by the British journalist Thomas de Waal in his book "The Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War". "Sargsyan's assessment makes us look at the most brutal carnage of the Karabakh war from a different angle. It is possible that these mass killings, even though partially, were a deliberate act of deterrence," the journalist wrote, and he was not wrong. Later, in 2008, Sargsyan did not the spare bullets against his own people in order to ascend the throne. But that is a completely different story.

Another Armenian "national hero", Zoriy Balayan, proudly admitted his personal participation in the Xocali genocide in his work "The Revival of Our Spirit", which was published in 1996. "When Khachatur and I entered one of the houses that had been seized, our soldiers nailed one 13-year-old Turk onto the window. To make sure that the child did not cry, Khachatur bundled his mother's breast, which had been cut off, into his mouth. Then I did to this 13-year-old Turk what his father had done to our children. I stripped the skin off his belly, head and breast. I looked at my watch. Seven minutes later, the child died of blood loss. Since I have a degree in medicine, I was a humanitarian. I do not think that I was happy because of what I did to that child. But my spirit was full of joy as I exacted revenge for at least one per cent of our people. Then, Khachatur dismembered the child's corpse and threw it to the dogs which had the same roots as him. In the evening, we did the same to another three children of the Turks (Azerbaijanis - R+)." This is how quickly Balayan forgot that he had been born in Azerbaijan and was indebted for many things in his life to the Azerbaijani people.

In this case, what can we say about Daud Kheyrian - a Lebanese Armenian who described in his book "For the Sake of the Cross" how he fought in Karabakh. "On this frosty morning, we had to build a bridge of dead bodies in order to cross a one-kilometre long swamp near Dasbulaq. I did not want to walk on the corpses. Then, Colonel Ohanyan signalled to me that I should not be afraid. This is one of the laws of war. I stepped on the breast of a blood-stained 9-11-year-old girl and took a step forward. My boots and trousers were covered in blood. This is how I passed about 1,200 bodies… On 2 March, the Armenian group Gaflan (which was engaged in burning the corpses) picked up about 2,000 corpses of filthy Mongols (Turks) and set them on fire in separate stacks, one kilometre from Xocali. On the last truck, I saw a 10-year-old girl who was wounded in the neck and arms. I took a closer look and realized that she was still breathing. Despite the frost, hunger and wounds, the child was still alive. I will never forget the eyes of that child who was fighting death! Then, one of the soldiers, who was called Tigran, grabbed her by the ears and dragged her to the stack onto which fuel had been poured. Then they were set on fire. And I heard someone cry in that stack, asking for help. I could not walk any further. But I wanted to liberate Susa from the Turks who were accursed by all the saints. That's why I went back. And they continued their journey for the sake of the Cross," Kheyrian wrote. Incidentally, there were many people like him - mercenaries from Lebanon and Syria - who fought on the Armenian side. They and militants from various terrorist organizations formed the backbone of the so-called "self-defence army of Karabakh". At the same time, we must also note the "special services" provided for the Armenians by the Russian 366 motorized infantry regiment, which had been stationed in the regional centre of Nagornyy Karabakh since Soviet times. The leadership of this regiment, and its commander Yuriy Zarvigarov, personally took a special part in the occupation of Azerbaijani villages and in the killings of civilians.

A participant in those events, Yuriy Girchenko, recalls: "Almost all the officers had sent their families home, while they themselves continued to serve… Well, you can stay and serve. But how are you going to live? That's why some officers and soldiers made their living by selling military property, especially as the buyers, local Armenians, freely entered the territory of the 366 motorized infantry regiment. They also sold cartridges and hand grenades… Of course, the military did wrong, but how else could they survive?" the officer wondered. He was no exception. Colonel V. Savelyev, who headed the counter-intelligence department of the Russian military unit, admitted that Colonel-General Boris Gromov (the current governor of the Moscow Region - author), Lieutenant-General Y, Grekov, Lieutenant-General S. Ohanyan and Colonel Kraule also played a direct role in arming the Armenian terrorist detachments.

Officers of the Russian unit "distinguished themselves" in the torture, humiliation and extermination of Azerbaijani civilians.

Video footage made by French reporters of Armenian origin, Jules Barelian and Serik Sitaryan, clearly shows a Kamaz truck, registration number 02-19 MM, delivering the corpses of Xocali residents to be burnt on a bonfire.

There is also the fact that Russian helicopter gunships, transferred from bases in Tskhinvali and Telavi, were involved in the mass destruction of Azerbaijani villages in Karabakh. On orders from the then president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, the commander of the 7th army was charged with handing over MI-24R helicopters to Armenian pilots who had graduated from summer courses in Telavi. On 19 February, Armenian pilots received a whole squadron of such helicopters and, three days later, they were incorporated into the 366 motorized infantry regiment in Stepanakert. These helicopters fired 89 rockets on Xocali on 26 February. Two pilots from this squadron were awarded the Order of the Red Cross for their "courage" in Xocali.

General Grekov admitted that the territory of Xocali was also fired on with Grad and Uragan rockets. Those who survived the rockets and tank projectiles were finished off by gunfire from ambushes which the Armenians mounted on the approaches to Agdam.

This is how the French journalist Jean-Yves Younet described this terrible scene: "We all witnessed the Xocali tragedy; we saw the bodies of hundreds of dead civilians - women, children, old people and defenders of Xocali. We were given a helicopter and we filmed from above everything we saw around Xocali. However, the Armenians started firing at our helicopter and we could not finish filming. This was a terrible picture. I have heard a lot about wars and about the brutality of German fascists, but the Armenians surpassed them by killing five or six-year-old children and civilians. We saw many wounded people in hospitals and carriages, even in kindergartens and schools."

The observations of Izvestiya correspondent, V. Belykh, are even more terrifying: "…From time to time, they bring the bodies of their dead, exchanged for living hostages, to Agdam. But you would not see anything like this in a nightmare: eyes put out, ears cut off, scalps taken and heads chopped off… There is no limit to the torture."

There is a great deal of such evidence, because the Xocali tragedy caused a huge outcry across the world. The Sunday Times wrote that "the Armenians did not spare even the families that tried to run away. They shot people en masse with assault rifles and machine guns."

In a word, all these are authentic facts, confirmed by numerous reports - facts that testify to a crime against humanity. And, at the same time, it is a lesson of history from which the world community has yet to draw the right conclusions.

Now that the Armenians are trying to impose the myth of the "Armenian genocide" by Ottoman Turkey upon the whole world, some Western countries take the trouble to look into the 100-year-old events and assess them. Many of them do not even wonder why Armenia refuses so obstinately to open its archives to historians, if it really has undeniable evidence of the so-called Armenian genocide. At the same time, when the conversation turns to events of the recent past - the genocide in Xocali, for some reason the world remains silent. Does it keep silent, perhaps, because it cannot think of a way to justify itself?!