The Diplomat
On Saturday 26 February, the Embassy of Azerbaijan held an in memoriam concert at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana in homage to the victims of the Khojaly massacre, conducted by the well-known Azerbaijani composer Turan Manafzade.
A minute’s silence was observed at the beginning of the event. In his speech, Azerbaijani Ambassador Ramiz Hasanov highlighted “the fact that as a result of this genocide, perpetrated by the Armenian armed forces in the early morning of 26 February 1992 in the town of Khojaly of the Nagorno-Karabakh Region, 613 people were killed, including 106 women, 63 children, 70 elderly people; 1,275 civilians were taken hostage and 155 people went missing”.
Ramiz Hasanov noted that in 1994, at the proposal of national leader Heydar Aliyev, “the Parliament of Azerbaijan declared 26 February as the Day of Commemoration of the Khojaly Genocide Victims”.
Ambassador Ramiz Hasanov stressed during his speech that the main goal of the international Justice for Khojaly campaign, launched in 2008 at the initiative of the Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, Leyla Aliyeva, is “to convey the truth about the Khojaly genocide to the international community and to commemorate its victims”0.
The parliaments of 17 countries, 24 US states, as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Organisation of Turkic States, have adopted numerous resolutions and decisions condemning the massacre of civilians in Khojaly as a crime against humanity. The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 22 April 2010 that the atrocities committed in Khojaly “amount to acts amounting to war crimes or crimes against humanity”.
