th
sitting in plenary of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the
Commonwealth of the Independent States took place in Samarkand on
28 October and Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova delivered
a speech there, reports citing the Press and Public
Relations Department of the Milli Majlis on October 28.
The speaker of the parliament of Armenia Alen Simonyan spoke at
the sitting as well, and he elected to voice certain claims aimed
at Azerbaijan that were rather departed from truth. In consequence,
Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova retook the floor to
respond to the presentation delivered by Mr Simonyan.
It had been alleged, utterly unfoundedly and falsely, that
Azerbaijan had occupied Armenia's territory; astonishingly, it is
astonishing that such an assertion should come from a
representative of the state that had held 20 per cent of our
territory under occupation for thirty years, Mrs Gafarova
commented.
Then, Sahiba Gafarova declared this emphatically: 'Azerbaijan
never had the slightest intention to occupy territories of Armenia.
Not a single town and not a single village has been captured.
Armenia committed yet another military provocation levelled at
Azerbaijan on 13 September while the Azerbaijani Army took
retaliatory action to preserve the territorial integrity of our
country to and to save the lives of military personnel and
civilians.'
As regards the matter of minefield maps, she said that
Azerbaijan had had a great difficulty obtaining the maps from
Armenia and then, those that had been received can only offer 25
per cent accuracy. In the meantime, Armenia continues mining our
territories. More than 1,400 mines have been found in our liberated
territories; remarkably, they had been manufactured in Armenia in
2021. The Armenians' mining our lands after the end of the war is a
war crime and a breach of both the international humanitarian laws
and the Trilateral Declaration on discontinuation of hostilities in
the region, Madam Speaker continued. She said that, if all the
available facts were considered, it would become abundantly clear
what state is interested in armed provocations and who is keen on
hindering the peace process – whether it was Azerbaijan, really, or
Armenia, that is.
The Chair of the Milli Majlis also responded to the Armenian
parliamentary speaker's question about war crimes.
'I state with full responsibility that the Armed Forces of
Azerbaijan have never committed war crimes,' Sahiba Gafarova was
saying, 'This charge is a paragon of duplicity of the state that
had pursued a policy of aggression for decades, the state that has
committed numerous war crimes against military servicemen and
civilians and has trampled underfoot the basic rights of almost a
million people. Unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan takes her international
obligations in earnest. The relations about the crimes committed at
the time of the hostilities are being investigated by the
appropriate state departments. The General Prosecution Office of
the Republic of Azerbaijan released statements on 17 September and
2 October 2022 about the current comprehensive investigation in
connexion with the videos spread via social networks anonymously as
alleged proof of unlawful deeds of the Army of Azerbaijan.
'And now, I'd like to ask whether the General Prosecution
Authority is working on the videos about the acts of the Armenian
side that are spreading on the Internet. Mr Simonyan failed to
mention them, somehow, even though those shots saw us the slander
or, rather, the obscenity afflicted on the bodies of the fallen
Azerbaijani soldiers.
'I am not going to talk about what the Armenians had done here
because one simply cannot talk about that dispassionately. A
normal, cultural human being simply could not wrap their head about
that. So, I'd like to repeat my question: is the General
Prosecution Authority of Armenia investigating those videos?'
continued the Chair of the Milli Majlis.
She also enquired about what steps Armenia just might be taking
to prosecute those guilty of the numerous war crimes committed
against Azerbaijan's soldiers and civilian population during both
Karabakh Wars and of the ruthless missile assaults upon Ganja,
Barda, Terter and other towns, that is, other densely populated
civilian communities during the 44 days of the last war. It is a
rhetorical question, naturally, because not a single step has been
taken to that end despite the multiple official video recordings
spread all over social networks.
Almost 3,900 Azerbaijanis have been reported missing since
Karabakh War I; where are those people, what has become of them?
Mass graves were found in two de-occupied villages earlier this
year…
Continuing, Sahiba Gafarova also commented on the frivolous
claims of the speaker of the Armenian parliament about the issue of
prisoners of war. She reminded him of the answer she had given to
his claims about POW at the CIS IPA sitting in Almaty before
repeating that Azerbaijan had handed all the POWs over to Armenia
in keeping with the Trilateral Declaration of 10 November 2020.
Those Armenian armed groups that infiltrated the Azerbaijani
territories and committed terrorist attacks on our military
personnel and civilians after the Trilateral Declaration had been
signed are not recognised as prisoners of war but, rather, they are
the criminals who committed grave offences.
As regards the Armenians living in Karabakh, Speaker Gafarova
remarked that, as President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan had said,
those people are citizens of Azerbaijan and then, Azerbaijan is not
disposed to discuss its internal affairs with any other state. The
rights and security of the Armenian population of Karabakh will be
provided and protected in accordance with the Constitution of
Azerbaijan. They will enjoy the same rights as the other
Azerbaijani citizens. They may rest assured that their lives will
be times better following their integration into the Azerbaijani
society.
Besides, the leader of the Milli Majlis commented on the claims
of destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. She emphasised that
Armenia had decimated the whole cultural heritage of the
Azerbaijani people and had destroyed purposefully numerous history,
culture and religion artefacts in the formerly captured territories
within the 30 years. Our mosques had been desecrated, destroyed,
turned into cowsheds and pigsties. The UNESCO never bothered to
organise visits to those parts to assess the heritage's condition
in spite of Azerbaijan's repeated urges.
Sahiba Gafarova declared again towards the closure of her speech
that there was no territorial unit called 'Nagorno Karabakh' in
Azerbaijan. The Karabakh Economic Region was formed pursuant to a
decree of the President of Azerbaijan and the area in question is
part of that region, pointed out the leader of the Milli
Majlis.