Remembrance
A Written Declaration (No. 324), authored by Azerbaijan Popular Front member Gulamhuseyn Aliyev in 2001, was signed by 30 members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, including members from Turkey (12), Azerbaijan (8), United Kingdom (3), Albania (2), Luxembourg (1), Republic of Macedonia (1), Poland (1), Bulgaria (1) and Norway (1), condemning the massacre of the entire population of Khojaly and destruction of the city by Armenians and recognizing genocide against Azerbaijanis.
On February 26, 2009, in congressional remarks, Congressman Ed Whitfield (R-KY), solemnly recognized the 17th anniversary of the massacre at Khojaly, and honored the lives of those lost in this great tragedy. On February 25, 2010, in congressional remarks, Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA), co-chairman of the House Azerbaijani Caucus, called Khojaly a site of largest killing of Azerbaijani civilians.
In January 2010, the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC), composed of parliaments of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) members states, which includes Azerbaijan but not Armenia, recognised the Justice for Khojaly awareness campaign initiated on 8 May 2008 by Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of the President of Azerbaijan and General Coordinator of Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue (ICYF-DC), describing the 1992 event as a "mass massacre by Armenian forces of Azerbaijani civilians in the town of Khojaly", and called upon "all member parliaments to give proper recognition to this crime against humanity and support the Campaign on national and international levels. In response, the Armenian foreign minister Eduard Nalbandyan said that OIC member-states would not recognize the Khojaly Massacre as a "genocide", and noted that no international or regional organization have made statements that were inconsistent with the Armenian approach to the Karabakh conflict.
On February 25, 2010, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Robert A. DeLeo signed a citation, proposed by the state representative Ellen Story, offering "sincerest acknowledgment of the 18th commemoration of the Khojaly Massacre".
In February 2010, Azerbaijani media reported a claim by the Azeri-Czech Society that representatives of the Azeri administration of Khojaly in exile and the Czech town of Lidice were to sign an agreement making Khojaly and Lidice sister cities and that a street in Lidice was to be named "Khojaly". Responding to the request of the Czech magazine Orer, the mayor of Lidice Veronika Kellerová clarified in March 2012 that the town of Khojaly signed a cooperation treaty with the Lidice Memorial affiliated with the Czech Ministry of Culture rather than with the municipality and there was no street named after Khojaly in Lidice. On February 25, 2011, New Jersey became the first state that recognized Khojaly Massacre on both legislative and executive levels. In the same month five members of the US House of Representatives, Steve Cohen (D-TN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Sue Myrick (R-NC) and Bill Shuster (R-PA), have issued Congressional statements remembering the victims of Khojaly massacre and condemning the crime. On March 3, 2011, the Texas House of Representatives passed a resolution 535 recognizing and commemorating victims of the Khojaly massacre.
On February 24, 2012, the U.S. State of Georgia General Assembly adopted a full House Resolution 1594 commemorating victims of the Khojaly massacre. The resolution co-sponsored by four Georgia state legislators stated that Armenia continues to formally deny any responsibility for the tragedy while President Serzh Sargsyan depicted the massacre as an act of revenge to "break stereotypes".
During 20th anniversary of the event, 50,000 Azerbaijanis marched through Baku to commemorate the victims of this tragedy. A rally of 150,000 to 300,000 people with slogans "We are all Khojalians, we are all Karabakhians!" gathered in Istanbul's Taksim Square. The protest reportedly had an ultranationalist undertone, with protesters carrying racist banners. The head of Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Commission, Ayhan Sefer Üstün, called on the country’s prosecutors to take action against protesters who held up racist and discriminatory signs at the rally
On 23 March 2012, U.S.House of Representatives of the state of Maine passed a resolution with regard to the 20th anniversary of the Khojaly tragedy.
Read more about this topic: Khojaly Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word remembrance:
“Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint;
And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“To be a surrealist ... means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.”
—René Magritte (1898–1967)
“I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)