Tartar, April 8, AZERTAC

One of the bloody crimes that the Armenians committed against the Azerbaijani people is the Aghdaban tragedy. The tragedy committed in Ahgdaban village of Kalbajar district on 8 April 1992 was not only a one-day atrocity, but continuation of the policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which Armenian nationalists have been permanently pursuing against ethnic Azerbaijanis for about 200 years.

Armenian armed men totally burnt and razed to the ground Aghdaban village of Kalbajar district, which consisted of 130 houses, on 8 April 1992. A total of 779 civilian residents of the village were tortured in an inhuman way, 67 civilians were killed and 8 villagers, including an old man aged 90-100, two minors and seven women, were burnt alive. The manuscripts by poet Aghdabanli Gurban and one of the masters of classic Ashig (ethnic Azerbaijani folklore) poems, Dada Shamshir, were destroyed as another manifestation of the policy of vandalism pursued by the Armenians against our cultural heritage.

The Aghdaban tragedy is one of a series of massacres, which were earlier committed with a view of killing ethnic Azerbaijanis in a compact way in the village of Garadaghli of Khojavand district, Khojali, Balligaya village of Goranboy district and other places. During this massacre, the norms of international law were rudely violated: civilians - minors, women and old people were killed in contradiction to all the norms of international law and human values.

Unprecedented atrocity in human history

In an interview with a regional correspondent of AZERTAC, residents of the village of Aghdaban talked about the tragedy committed 30 years ago. A resident of the village, Yashar Mammadov, who now lives in Tartar, says that he will never forget that tragic day although years have passed since then. “A long time has passed since the tragedy committed in the village of Aghdaban, but, we as witnesses will never forget the atrocities of the Armenians. Human history has never seen such barbarism. This could only be committed by Armenians. I have read a lot of books and watched many movies, but I have never seen such atrocities as those committed by Armenians”, he said.

Yashar Mammadov remembers that tragic day as follows: “I was in guard of the village together with other young people that day. We were 13-14 people. The defense was organized only by the residents of the village. Our weapons were only hunting guns. When I entered the road by the morning, I saw light coming from the Armenian side. They made ambushes in the forests. They wanted to besiege the village and kill all of its residents. But, our being there, our feeling that they were coming and the start of firing let the residents of the village know about it. The Armenians blocked all the roads to the village, but the residents managed to escape through a path that the Armenians didn’t know. They also blocked the motor road to the village and destroyed a vehicle, which was coming to help, with a grenade gun. The enemy had many more guns that we did. When four pieces of military hardware drove on us, I and three of my comrades entered into the forest. The Armenian thugs gunned down four people there. I returned to that place the next day and saw a terrible picture. After firing to death, they cut out the internal organs of two people and drove over them with military hardware. After killing the other two, they shot onto their mouths”.

After robbing the village, the Armenians set fire to all the houses there. The next day I went to the village, I saw some of the houses still burning. I saw the atrocities committed in the village and the people killed with my own eyes. A woman called Hayat in our neighborhood attempted to get her son Musa out of home, but he wouldn’t get out. The Armenians burnt Musa by throwing him into a haystack. I saw his corpse, as well. Hayat was also shot at her head. There was blood on the ground and her headscarf was there, but she was absent herself. Later I heard that he had also been taken away and burnt. A sister called Fatima of another of my neighbor, Zeynalabdin, didn’t leave her house. When I entered into their house, I saw Fatima’s corpse burnt under her bed. The Armenians locked the door of the house and set fire to it and burnt to death a baby and his father. They took five villagers captive. A woman called Gamar didn’t want to go with them, but she was forced at gunpoint. Gamar took a wood from the ground and hit an Armenian. In response, the Armenians gunned down her and her son outright. They took her husband and daughter away. In neighboring Chaygovushan village, they set fire to the houses of an old man called Bakir and his wife. They also killed an old man Gara”.

Another resident of the village, Mardan Karimov, remembers the day on which the tragedy was committed this way: “Armenian aggression was growing in 1990-1992. Villages populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis fell into occupation one after another. We knew that the Armenians would attack our village, too. Therefore, the people of the village were defending it alternately. I was on duty to defend the village on the night of 7 April. The Armenians occupied the mount of Sari by passing through its back. We knew nothing about all this. In the morning, we gathered in the place called Adil bay’s spring. Then, I worked as a teacher at school. I said that it was time for classes and I needed to go to the village. When myself and a boy called Giyas approached the village by 20 meters, the Armenians started firing on us from all sides. I ran a while and fell. I saw them firing on us from the top and middle of the mountain and a direction close to us. Once we walked over the hill, they gunned down Giyas. When I walked into the back of the mount of Namaz, I saw that he had been wounded on his back. The Armenian tanks and soldiers had already entered the village. The Armenians again fired on me once I reached the glade of Turshsu. I couldn’t go to the village. I had no information about the village and our house there. Luckily, the residents of the village managed to escape through a pathway after hearing shots. The Armenians burnt down the village and brutally killed those residents who hadn’t been able to escape. I can never forget this atrocity. It was a tragedy equal to that of Khojali. The Armenians committed the atrocity that cannot go along with humanity”.

Other tragedies committed by Armenians in Kalbajar

Armenian hatred for Azerbaijanis was not over with Aghdaban tragedy

It was decided to evacuate women and children from Kalbajar district on 31 March 1993 since the situation in Kalbajar had deteriorated. Therefore, residents of 30 villages were to be evacuated via a tunnel going from Kalbajar to Lachin. It was planned to take out 25 people - women, children and old people, by trucks on those days. The Armenians intensively fired on those people at the exit of the tunnel, killing many people and taking the others hostage. Such massacres happened many times at the exit of the tunnel on the road to Kalbajar. The facts that fire was set to a Kamaz truck and an eight-year-old child was burnt alive in front of the eyes of his family have not been erased from memory yet.

Another massacre committed in Kalbajar is the Bashlibel tragedy. The Armenian armed forces attacked the village of Bashlibel on 3 April 1993, massively robbing the houses owned by the villagers and burnt all of them out. A total of 62 people who didn’t manage to leave the village took shelter in the natural caves of the mountainous territory called Portda at the highest part of the village. The piles of the Armenian military forces armed with machine guns and large-caliber guns were not satisfied with the atrocities they had committed and continued their rage. On 18 April 1993, they discovered the rocks in which unarmed civilians took shelter in their native village and opened fire on the caves with helpless civilians inside. As a result, 12 people who had no chance to make any resistance, including one twelve-year-old child and one sixteen-year-old teen (6 women and 6 men in total) were killed outright in their shelter. It was found in the materials of the investigation that 7 out of the 36 people, who took shelter in other caves to escape members of the criminal groups and get rid of the atrocities, died in different villages of Kalbajar district from the injuries they sustained in the besiegement.

The residents of the village of Bashlibel, who survived their ordeal, divided into two groups and took shelter in different caves. Despite the threat to their lives, in the early hours of 12 May 1993, they approached the caves in which their co-villagers had been gunned down, dug graves and buried the corpses of 12 people with their clothes in two rows (six graves in a row) and left that place.

It should be noted that a total of 511 civilians were killed and 321 civilians were taken captive and missing in Kalbajar district, which was occupied on 2 April 1993 and had been in captivity for many years. A total of 60,000 residents of Kalbajar were forced to temporarily settle in 770 settlements in 56 districts of the republic. Following the occupation, tens of monuments of history and culture, 97 schools, 9 kindergartens, 116 libraries, 43 clubs, 42 houses of culture, a museum of history and ethnography, 9 hospitals, 75 medical points, 23 out-patient hospitals, 9 pharmacies, hundreds of administrative buildings, thousands of apartments, hundreds of vehicles and machinery have been plundered and destroyed and the wealth worth billions of manats of this district have been carried to Armenia.

President Ilham Aliyev, who visited Kalbajar after its liberation from occupation, said on the Armenian atrocities there: “Look and see, the town has been totally destroyed by the Armenians. The barbarian Armenians have demolished Kalbajar like our other towns and villages. All of the buildings have been destroyed. Armenians illegally inhabited some buildings. They burnt and demounted them when leaving here. Time changes, but the ugly face of Armenian fascism never changes. They destroyed our towns and villages when they occupied these lands in the early 1990s, when we drove them out of here in 2020, they cut and burned the trees and destroyed the buildings as they were about to leave”.

Residents of Aghdaban are waiting for punishment of those who committed the tragedy

The great leader Heydar Aliyev was first to give a legal and political assessment of the Aghdaban tragedy and called what happened there the biggest crime against humanity and a shame in the name of all mankind.

It is a pity that the tragedies perpetrated by the Armenians have not yet received their genuine legal and political assessment in the international arena and those who committed the crimes have not been brought to account. The residents of Aghdaban, who have lost members of their families, their next of kin and native lands and have been confined to living as internally displaced people, like the residents of Khojali, Garadaghli, Balligaya and Meshali, have been long waiting for the day when those who committed the tragedy will get the punishment they deserve.