YEREVAN (Combined Sources)—A new website is exposing Azerbaijani propaganda about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The site, Xocali.net, is titled “The Chronicles of Unseen Forgery and Falsification,” and it’s an online repository founded by the Xenophobia Prevention Initiative. It is available in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Azerbaijani.
According to site author Samvel Martirosian, Xocali.net seeks to set the record straight about the Nagorno-Karabakh liberation struggle and in particular the battle of Khojaly, which Azerbaijan claims was a massacre perpetrated by Armenians 17 years ago.
Martirosian announced the website to the public Wednesday during a press conference in Yerevan. Speaking to reporters, he said the initiative had “investigated and brought to light a great number of falsifications.”
The website puts Azeri propaganda to the test, analyzing publications, videos and photographs issued over the years by various Azerbaijani state agencies, organizations, and media outlets that allegedly depict Armenians slaughtering Azeris during the Karabakh conflict.
“We’ve proven, for example, that Azerbaijanis are carrying posters of pictures depicting victims of the Kosovo war, when they gather at Armenia’s embassies in different countries to hold anti-Armenian rallies,” he explained. “This fact is also be reflected on the project’s site.”
Martirosian singled out at least 20 falsified photos used by Azerbaijani media in covering the battle of Khojaly over the years.
Xocali.net compares doctored photographs claimed to be from the Karabakh war with their originals, proven to be from conflicts in Iraqi, Afghanistan or Israel and not Karabakh.
“Among them are photos of victims of the massacres of the Kurdish population in Turkey, pictures of the victims of the mass killings in Srebrenica of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and pictures of children wounded in a bus explosion in 1988,” Martirosian said. “A picture of a crying woman, in fact, was shot after the earthquake and has nothing to do with the events of Khojaly.”
The website also contains research documents, publications and videos on the issue. Included in its archives are: “The Case of Khojaly: A Special Folder” by Hike Demoyan and Levon Melik-Shakhnazarian; an article by jailed Azeri journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, titled “Cattle Was Saved, People – Not”; and video interviews with Meskhetian-Turks from Khojaly, who speak about Azeri soldiers shooting on civilians trying to evacuate Khojali through the Armenian secure corridor.
Khojaly was among the fiercest battles of the war. It took place from February 24 to 26, 1994, following which the Karabakh Army liberated the Azeri stronghold from where the Azeri army would rain rockets and fire on the civilian population in Karabakh.
Neutralizing the Azeri stronghold was a key turning point in the Karabakh conflict, which culminated in the liberation of the historic Armenian city of Shoushi in May of the same year.
What are our Armenian brethren in Armenian doing about this? Those Azeri vermins have been using warhead rhetoric about the Khojali victims for many years now, when in-fact the Armenian soldiers in Artsakh told the Azeris to evacuate the Azeri civilians and it was the Azeri soldiers that fired their own civilian people in Khojali.
In other instances, the Azeri soldiers opened fire and killed Armenian civilians then mutilated them to lie and say that Armenians killed Azeri civilians. These Azeri vermins have been using warhead rhetoric lies over the internet and the media for years now lying and crying wolf. Armenians from Armenia should have put a stop to it years ago.
10 million Azeri Turks against 100 thousand Karabaghi population, this does not make sense mathematically..
Azeri Turks propaganda machine is crying for their losses. Aliev is looking for some compassion from West, therefore he created some kinds of Genocide for himself and for Turkic world…..behind all these Genocide claims for sure their cousin Turks from the land of Ottomans are involved… world already recorded pogroms against Armenians in Samgate and Baku…and the bombing of Armenian population in NKR is well documented
in the world news of that time..Aliev is looking for Islamic solidarity against Armenians…
To Nairian:
Thank you for being so informed. Most Armenians I meet in the US don’t even know what Artsakh means, let alone Khojaly… To answer your question – our Armenian brethren in Armenia fought and won that war. They also created the very site that impressed you so much. As you can see our Armenians from Armenia have been busy for the last 20+ years and in addition to these virtual wars they have to actually physically guard the borders where the vermins shoot at them. I don’t see too many brethren from here coming over to help them out with that… Maybe you can help by editing the English (other languages?) translations on that site? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.
How odd to read the true ‘rats’ in this region referring to their Azeri neighbors as vermin. Perhaps they caught a glimpse of themselves in the mirror and mistakenly thought they were looking at Azerbaijan instead. However, the insults and the new “website” won’t change reality. The most offensive falsification in this situation is Armenia still pretending to have righs to land that is INTERNATIONALLY recognized as belonging to Azerbaijan, in order to justify the sickening massacre of innocent civillians that occurred in Khojaly. It is notable that the only defense Armenia can offer is, “well 20 of those photos aren’t the real pictures”, as though that proves they didn’t commit the heinous acts that the world knows they did. Here’s a newsflash for you blind Armenian vermin, just because some victims used the wrong pictures during a protest will NEVER blot out the blood that is on the hands of the guilty soldiers and ignorant citizens that close their eyes and pretend it never happened. The irony is that Armenia cries so loud to the world for recogniztion of what it claims Turkey did during a period of war, yet it never acknowledges the same despicable brutality it exerted on a peaceful country just for the sake of its own expansion and to gain Russian favor. So go ahead, continue to make your websites, insult your neighbors, do it as loud as you can, but you will never drown out the truth, nor cleanse your souls from the blood of the innocent that stains you as a nation. Hang your heads in shame, Armenians.
Why did these neighbors have BM-21 Grad rocket launchers installed in Khojaly shooting rockets at Stepanakert and surrounding Armenian villages?
Read the true story of Khojaly civilians killed by Azerbaijani military near Agdam:
http://en-voskanapat.do.am/news/2010-02-24-40
You have no shame, no God, no conscience. Don’t pollute the air here. Your lies have been disclosed to the whole world now. Your false pictures of wars and killings from different parts of the world which you have falsified and turned on the Armenias will come back to haunt you for the rest of your lives. You committed the Sumgait and Khojali genocide against the Armenians because the Turkish Genocide of Armenians has not been properly condemned by the civilised world as a whole. Go cry your crocodile tears elswhere. Liers, falsifiers, godless warmongers.
Where have you been with your sense of what is true what is false when Sumgait shook the hearts of even strongest disbelievers of the dark nature of Azeris?
It was the Azeri’s who started the war. The Armenians voted to be free from Azerbajan on land that was given to the Azeri’s by Stalin. It never belonged to Azeri’s. That is why 99% of the population was Armenian. In return, the Azeri’s started the Armenian pogroms in Baku and Sumgait, with the mass murder of Armenians in the streets by gang rapes, beatings, burnings and shelling of civilians in Stepanakart. You also started the destruction of all the ancient Armenian monuments, grave stones and heritage to continue the facade that there was no Armenians ever living there. But that’s okay, right? Understand this: Karabagh is Armenian. It always has been and always will be. Azeri’s started the war and lost. Worry about your phony leader that pockets all your oil money, lies to his people and is now considered himself and his family to be permanent kings.
turks have only two “talents” lieing and criminality. as can plainly be see in your usual PROPAGANDA piece.
Grish Begian, what you said completely fits Armenian claims. You are looking for compassion from West with your baseless genocide claims. But West fed up with those claims, both from Azeris and from you. Why a population of only several million people keeps the whole world busy with their problems. Handle your problems within your borders or with your neighbours. We have more important things to do.