Today April 10th is the 24th anniversary of the Maragha massacre

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Today is the 24th anniversary of the Maragha massacre

13:17, 10 Apr 2016

Siranush Ghazanchyan

http://www.armradio.am/en/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Maragha-620x300.jpg

Today is the 24th anniversary of the Maragha massacre.

Twenty-four years ago, on 10 April, the village of Maragha located in the Martakert region of Nagorno Karabakh was attacked by the Azerbaijani forces. This was one of the most tragic episodes of Azerbaijan’s military aggression against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

On April 10, 1992, after intensive artillery shelling the Azerbaijani armed units invaded the peaceful village and committed a ruthless reprisal over defenseless people.

The Maragha Massacre was the mass murder of ethnic Armenian civilians. Up to now the Azerbaijani government has not received deserved punishment by the international community.

 

 

http://www.armradio.am/en/2016/04/10/today-is-the-24th-anniversary-of-the-maragha-massacre/

 

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http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=15813&hl=

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That Great Lady Baroness Carolyn Cox:

 

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Maragha genocide eyewitness: Armenians are Christians, and they have
to be murdered

SOCIETY 12:16 11/04/2016 REGION

“The name of this village is associated with a massacre which never
reached the world’s headlines, although at least 45 Armenians died
cruel deaths. During the CSI mission to Nagorno Karabakh in April,
news came through that a village in the north, in Mardakert region,
had been overrun by Azeri-Turks on April 10 and there had been a
number of civilians killed. A group went to obtain evidence and found
a village with survivors in a state of shock, their burnt-out homes
still smoldering, charred remains of corpses and vertebrae still on
the ground, where people had their heads sawn off, and their bodies
burnt in front of their families. 45 people had been massacred and 100
were missing, possibly suffering a fate worse than death.” This is how
Baroness Caroline Cox describes the tragedy of Maragha, a village in
Karabakh, in her book “Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in Nagorno
Karabakh” (co-author: John Eibner). She called Maragha a “contemporary
Golgotha.”

The details of what happened in the once prosperous village 24 years
ago, on 10 April 1992, still chill blood, making one doubt whether the
perpetrators can have the right to be called human beings. The stories
of the survivors, who currently live in the village Nor (New) Maragha,
leave no doubt that what happened in the Karabakh village on that day
completely matches the definition of genocide provided by a respective
UN Convention. Back in 1997, the Armenian side submitted documents and
facts about the tragedy in Maragha to the UN Human Rights Committee.
The process could not be accomplished then. However, the Armenian side
intends to introduce the Maragha dossier to international agencies
once again in the frameworks of An Ordinary Genocide project.

Remarkably, Shahin Talib oglu Tagiyev, the commander of Gurtulush
battalion, which attacked the village committing that crime against
humanity, was named the first national hero of independent Azerbaijan.
This was a continuation of the shameful tradition of heroization of
murderers of Armenians, which started with “sumgait” and was continued
later in the case of Ramil Safarov, the Budapest maniac.

During the Maragha genocide commemoration days, Panorama.am publishes
evidence provided by several former Maragha residents. The full
materials are available at karabakhrecords.info and maragha.org.

Araik Grigoryan

The fire started before the dawn. At first, they fired with equipment
like Alazan used against grad in the Soviet period, then with cannons
and from tanks. People started to leave the village in panic in the
direction of the upper villages, there was turmoil everywhere, people
were leaving with children in their hands, on transport, and on foot.
There was hardly room to move on the way to the upper village situated
about 3-4 kilometers from Maragha. Transportation was mainly used by
volunteers, who were protecting the village on the front line; that is
why women, the old, and children were leaving the village on foot in
order to be saved from the fire.

By about 12 p.m., they had already started approaching. Tanks were the
first to enter, followed by detachments of bandits and marauders. They
were entering from different sides. They started to set houses to
fire. They killed or took hostages everyone they met no matter they
were civilians or volunteers. Many inhabitants were hiding in earth
asylums dug in yards. Everyone, who was hiding there – old men, women,
children, men – were either killed or taken hostages. Even if there
was nobody inside but the house was Armenian, they frenziedly
destroyed it only because of that, broke the utensils, robbed and
fired the property. Meeting pets on their way, they treated them with
such an unimaginable cruelty only because they were kept by Armenians.
They tied an old man from our block – his name was Mushegh – to a tank
and dragged him 3 kilometers. If they are Armenians and Christians,
they must be killed and destroyed.

Three brothers and their mother were taken hostages. They were driven
to Mir Bashir, then to Barda, where one of the brothers was exchanged.
He said that they had been treated like animals rather than people
when in captivity. He told about the martyrly death of his brother
Gagik, who had behaved very bravely and courageously in the captivity
answering back to all the insults of the Azerbaijanis. He was punished
with a cruel death for that: they tied him to rails and set the train
on him. Nothing is still known about his mother and third brother’s
fate.

On April 10, 1992, after a 3-hour artillery preparation, the subunits
of the Azerbaijani regular army invaded the peaceful village of
Maragha from the Azerbaijani Mir-Bashir (currently). The attack was
not dictated by military necessity. Over 100 people became victims of
the aggression – mainly women, children, and old people. Civilians
were killed by the most cruel ways: they were partitioned, burnt
alive, beheaded, thrown under tanks, or cut with axes. About 50 people
were taken hostages, including 9 children. While in captivity, many
Maragha residents were tortured, humiliated, and were a subject to an
inhuman treatment. Many of them were later exchanged, but the fate of
many is still unknown. In about two weeks, on April 22-23, Maragha was
again attacked, people, who had returned to the site of fire, had to
leave the native town forever. Currently, Maragha is under Azerbaijani
occupation.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.panorama.am_en_news_2016_04_11_Maragha-2Dgenocide_1560730&d=CwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=LVw5zH6C4LHpVQcGEdVcrQ&m=gFXAWWtEztorOwpSBspi1f6xtO3YdFr81xnQVn2VeFM&s=mJbLsC47HmT-6qJ_rrA7zpzTV5Az3c81Qo5u6YZdtCs&e=