EU-wide Garabakh rally staged in Berlin

EU-wide Garabakh rally staged in Berlin

Rome/Berlin [ENA] The EU-wide Garabakh rally to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the Khojaly massacre has kicked off in Paris Square near Brandenburg Gate, Berlin. The Khojaly massacre, also famous as the Khojaly tragedy, was the mass murder of allegedly 613 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly on 26 February 1992. According to the Azerbaijani Authorities, along with the Memorial Human Rights Center,

Human Rights Watch and other international observers, the massacre was perpetrated by the ethnic Armenian armed forces, with backing of some military personnel of the 366th Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств) regiment, not acting on orders from the command. The death toll was 613 civilians, including 106 women and 63 children. The event turned out to be the largest massacre in the course of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s. Western governments and the western media refer to it as the "Khojaly massacre", "Khojaly tragedy" or the "Battle for Khojaly". Azerbaijani sources occasionally refer to the massacre as the "Khojaly genocide"

(Azerbaijani: Xocalı soyqırımı) and the "Khojaly tragedy" (Azerbaijani: Xocalı faciəsi). The rally is initiated by Azerbaijani diaspora organizations based in more than 30 countries and with the administrative support of Alliance of Azerbaijanis in Germany. Azerbaijanis living in Azerbaijan, Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, France, Romania, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Greece, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, the US and Canada, as well as diaspora members of the fraternal peoples joined the rally. The rally participants chanted slogans such as “Garabakh is Azerbaijan!”, “We say No to terror!”,

“Azerbaijan demands justice!”, “Don’t be indifferent to Khojaly!”, “Shame on the murders of the civils and innocent people!”, “Armenia stop to lie!”, “Stop invasion!”, etc. They demanded international community to give proper, legal and political assessment to the Khojaly massacre committed by the Armenian invaders 28 years ago, put pressure on Armenia to return the Azerbaijani lands back, restore the rights of the Azerbaijanis deprived of their motherlands, and make Armenia follow the decisions of the proper international documents adopted with regards to the conflict.

During the rally, the participants distributed brochures about the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Khojaly genocide, financial and moral losses of the Azerbaijani side as a result of the aggressive policy of Armenia among the locals and tourists of Berlin. Thousands of Azerbaijanis attended the rally.