The Khojaly Massacre and the Tragedy of Ethnic Cleansing

On February 25, 1992, civilians fleeing the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly met an astonishingly nasty fate at the hands of the approaching Armenian military. The Armenians claimed that the deaths were accidental collateral damage, but the scalping and beheading of women and children says otherwise.

From 1988 - 1994, a secessionist movement led by ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh province of Azerbaijan turned into all out war as neighboring Armenia came to the assistance of their ethnic kinfolk. Violations of the Geneva Conventions were rampant on both sides -- Azerbaijan, for instance, showed little restraint when bombing in civilian populated areas -- but the massacre of over 600 unarmed civilians seeking refuge from the fighting was particularly cruel, assuming a character of ethnic cleansing rather than just civil war.

A Human Rights Watch investigation placed responsibility for the Khojaly Massacre solely with the Armenians, finding no evidence to support Armenian claims that it was the Azeri army that blocked the civilian's escape. Rather, the massacre was an act of unmitigated cruelty, with the perpetrators apparently unsatisfied with killing alone and engaging in torture and mutilation as well. That the Azeri forces engaged in their own anti-Armenian campaigns was no excuse -- one massacre does not justify another, and no other case of violence again civilians during the war matches the scale of the massacre at Khojaly.

That the perpetrators of the massacre represent a people who have themselves been subject to genocide adds further insult to an unnecessary tragedy.

Photo credit: Radio Free Europe.