[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 19 (Friday, February 18, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E284-E285]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING THE TRAGEDY OF KHOJALY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 17, 2005

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, for years a number of 
distinguished Members of this House have come to the Floor of this 
Chamber every April to commemorate the so-called Armenian Genocide--the 
exact details of which are still very much under debate today almost 90 
years after the events. Ironically and tragically, none of these 
Members has ever once mentioned the ethnic cleansing carried out by the 
Armenians during the Armenia-Azerbaijan war which ended a mere decade 
ago.
  Khojaly was a little known small town in Azerbaijan until February 
1992. Today it no longer exists, and for people of Azerbaijan and the 
region, the word ``Khojaly'' has become synonymous with pain, sorrow, 
and cruelty. On February 26, 1992, the world ended for the people of 
Khojaly when Armenian troops supported by a Russian infantry regiment 
did not just attack the town but they razed it to the ground. In the 
process the Armenians brutally murdered 613 people, annihilated whole 
families, captured 1275 people, left 1,000 civilians maimed or 
crippled, and another 150 people unaccounted for in their wake.
  Memorial, a Russian human rights group, reported that ``scores of the 
corpses bore traces of profanation. Doctors on a hospital train in 
Agdam noted no less than four corpses that had been scalped and one 
that had been beheaded. . . . and one case of live scalping:''
  Various other witnesses reported horrifying details of the massacre. 
The late Azerbaijani journalist Chingiz Mustafayev, who was the first 
to film the aftermath of the massacre, wrote an account of what he saw. 
He said, ``Some children were found with severed ears; the skin had 
been cut from the left side of an elderly woman's face; and men had 
been scalped.''
  Human Rights Watch called the tragedy at the time ``the largest 
massacre to date in the conflict.''
  The New York Times wrote about ``truckloads of bodies'' and described 
acts of ``scalping.''

[[Page E285]]

  This savage cruelty against innocent women, children and the elderly 
is unfathomable in and of itself but the senseless brutality did not 
stop with Khojaly. Khojaly was simply the first. In fact, the level of 
brutality and the unprecedented atrocities committed at Khojaly set a 
pattern of destruction and ethnic cleansing that Armenian troops would 
adhere to for the remainder of the war. On November 29, 1993, Newsweek 
quoted a senior US Government official as saying ``What we see now is a 
systematic destruction of every village in their (the Armenians) way. 
It's vandalism.''
  This year, as they have every year since the massacre, the leaders of 
Azerbaijan's Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities issue appeals on 
the eve of commemoration of the massacre of Khojaly urging the 
international community to condemn the February 26, 1992 bloodshed, 
facilitate liberation of the occupied territories and repatriation of 
the displaced communities.
  And every year, those residents of Khojaly, who survived the 
massacre--many still scattered among one million refugees and displaced 
persons in camps around Azerbaijan--appeal with pain and hope to the 
international community to hold Armenia responsible for this crime.
  I am pleased to say that on January 25, 2005 the Parliamentary 
Assembly of the Council of Europe overwhelmingly adopted a resolution 
highlighting that ``considerable parts of Azerbaijan's territory are 
still occupied by the Armenian forces and separatist forces are still 
in control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.'' It also expressed concern 
that the military action between 1988 and 1994 and the widespread 
ethnic hostilities which preceded it, ``led to large-scale ethnic 
expulsion and the creation of mono-ethnic areas which resemble the 
terrible concept of ethnic cleansing.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is not the ringing condemnation that the survivors 
of Khojaly deserve but it is an important first step by an 
international community that has too long been silent on this issue. 
Congress should take the next step and I hope my colleagues will join 
me in standing with Azerbaijanis as they commemorate the tragedy of 
Khojaly. The world should know and remember.

                          ____________________