BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 28. As reported, the 54th sitting in plenary of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of the Independent States took place in Samarkand on 28 October and Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova delivered a speech there, Trend reports citing the Press and Public Relations Department of the Milli Majlis on October 28.
The speaker of the parliament of Armenia Alen Simonyan spoke at the sitting as well, and he elected to voice certain claims aimed at Azerbaijan that were rather departed from truth. In consequence, Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova retook the floor to respond to the presentation delivered by Mr Simonyan.
It had been alleged, utterly unfoundedly and falsely, that Azerbaijan had occupied Armenia’s territory; astonishingly, it is astonishing that such an assertion should come from a representative of the state that had held 20 per cent of our territory under occupation for thirty years, Mrs Gafarova commented.
Then, Sahiba Gafarova declared this emphatically: ‘Azerbaijan never had the slightest intention to occupy territories of Armenia. Not a single town and not a single village has been captured. Armenia committed yet another military provocation levelled at Azerbaijan on 13 September while the Azerbaijani Army took retaliatory action to preserve the territorial integrity of our country to and to save the lives of military personnel and civilians.’
As regards the matter of minefield maps, she said that Azerbaijan had had a great difficulty obtaining the maps from Armenia and then, those that had been received can only offer 25 per cent accuracy. In the meantime, Armenia continues mining our territories. More than 1,400 mines have been found in our liberated territories; remarkably, they had been manufactured in Armenia in 2021. The Armenians’ mining our lands after the end of the war is a war crime and a breach of both the international humanitarian laws and the Trilateral Declaration on discontinuation of hostilities in the region, Madam Speaker continued. She said that, if all the available facts were considered, it would become abundantly clear what state is interested in armed provocations and who is keen on hindering the peace process – whether it was Azerbaijan, really, or Armenia, that is.
The Chair of the Milli Majlis also responded to the Armenian parliamentary speaker’s question about war crimes.
‘I state with full responsibility that the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan have never committed war crimes,’ Sahiba Gafarova was saying, ‘This charge is a paragon of duplicity of the state that had pursued a policy of aggression for decades, the state that has committed numerous war crimes against military servicemen and civilians and has trampled underfoot the basic rights of almost a million people. Unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan takes her international obligations in earnest. The relations about the crimes committed at the time of the hostilities are being investigated by the appropriate state departments. The General Prosecution Office of the Republic of Azerbaijan released statements on 17 September and 2 October 2022 about the current comprehensive investigation in connexion with the videos spread via social networks anonymously as alleged proof of unlawful deeds of the Army of Azerbaijan.
‘And now, I’d like to ask whether the General Prosecution Authority is working on the videos about the acts of the Armenian side that are spreading on the Internet. Mr Simonyan failed to mention them, somehow, even though those shots saw us the slander or, rather, the obscenity afflicted on the bodies of the fallen Azerbaijani soldiers.
‘I am not going to talk about what the Armenians had done here because one simply cannot talk about that dispassionately. A normal, cultural human being simply could not wrap their head about that. So, I’d like to repeat my question: is the General Prosecution Authority of Armenia investigating those videos?’ continued the Chair of the Milli Majlis.
She also enquired about what steps Armenia just might be taking to prosecute those guilty of the numerous war crimes committed against Azerbaijan’s soldiers and civilian population during both Karabakh Wars and of the ruthless missile assaults upon Ganja, Barda, Terter and other towns, that is, other densely populated civilian communities during the 44 days of the last war. It is a rhetorical question, naturally, because not a single step has been taken to that end despite the multiple official video recordings spread all over social networks.
Almost 3,900 Azerbaijanis have been reported missing since Karabakh War I; where are those people, what has become of them? Mass graves were found in two de-occupied villages earlier this year…
Continuing, Sahiba Gafarova also commented on the frivolous claims of the speaker of the Armenian parliament about the issue of prisoners of war. She reminded him of the answer she had given to his claims about POW at the CIS IPA sitting in Almaty before repeating that Azerbaijan had handed all the POWs over to Armenia in keeping with the Trilateral Declaration of 10 November 2020.
Those Armenian armed groups that infiltrated the Azerbaijani territories and committed terrorist attacks on our military personnel and civilians after the Trilateral Declaration had been signed are not recognised as prisoners of war but, rather, they are the criminals who committed grave offences.
As regards the Armenians living in Karabakh, Speaker Gafarova remarked that, as President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan had said, those people are citizens of Azerbaijan and then, Azerbaijan is not disposed to discuss its internal affairs with any other state. The rights and security of the Armenian population of Karabakh will be provided and protected in accordance with the Constitution of Azerbaijan. They will enjoy the same rights as the other Azerbaijani citizens. They may rest assured that their lives will be times better following their integration into the Azerbaijani society.
Besides, the leader of the Milli Majlis commented on the claims of destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. She emphasised that Armenia had decimated the whole cultural heritage of the Azerbaijani people and had destroyed purposefully numerous history, culture and religion artefacts in the formerly captured territories within the 30 years. Our mosques had been desecrated, destroyed, turned into cowsheds and pigsties. The UNESCO never bothered to organise visits to those parts to assess the heritage’s condition in spite of Azerbaijan’s repeated urges.
Sahiba Gafarova declared again towards the closure of her speech that there was no territorial unit called ‘Nagorno Karabakh’ in Azerbaijan. The Karabakh Economic Region was formed pursuant to a decree of the President of Azerbaijan and the area in question is part of that region, pointed out the leader of the Milli Majlis.