As Azerbaijan prepares to mark the anniversary of the Feb. 26, 1992 genocide in Khojaly, country’s Human Rights Commissioner (Ombudsman) Sabina Aliyeva urge international organizations and the world community to "take decisive measures for the legal recognition of this crime of genocide, one of the bloody massacres perpetrated in the 20th century, and to bring all persons responsible for this crime to justice.”

On the heels of the Soviet Union's dissolution, Armenian forces illegally occupied the town of Khojaly in Karabakh on Feb. 26, 1992, after battering it with heavy artillery and tanks, assisted by an infantry regiment. The town was the site of a two-hour Armenian massacre that killed 613 Azerbaijani civilians – including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly people – and seriously injured 487 others. Some 150 of the 1,275 Azerbaijanis that the Armenians captured during what has now been called the Khojaly Massacre remain missing, while eight families were completely wiped out.

The Karabakh region had been the site of mass killings and burials since the First Karabakh War in the early 1990s, during which the Armenian military occupied Karabakh – a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan – and seven adjacent regions, including Khojaly. In the fall of 2020, in 44 days of fighting, Azerbaijan liberated several cities, villages and settlements in Karabakh from some 30 years of Armenian occupation.

"This serious criminal act, encompassing elements of the crime of genocide, constitutes one of the tragic pages in the history of humankind and a gross violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms. These premeditated acts were intended to kill ethnic Azerbaijanis on the basis of their national identity, and forcibly expel them from their ancestral lands, and instill fear and panic among the population,” Aliyeva said in a written statement.

"As a result of the Khojaly Genocide, the norms of international human rights and international humanitarian law were violated, including the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims. Consequently, the rights to life, personal security, property, freedom from torture, and other fundamental human rights were seriously violated,” Aliyeva added.