In Budapest, on the night of February 19, 2004, ramil safarov, an Azerbaijani, hacked to death Gurgen Margaryan, an Armenian who was asleep, with an axe.
Everyone knows about this tragedy. At least everyone in Armenia knows, everyone in Azerbaijan knows, everyone in Hungary knows. For those who don't know the officers were in Budapest within the framework of NATO Partnership for Peace program and were taking English language courses. safarov, who had received the appropriate training in Turkey, had an axe to grind. Margaryan, who was not expecting anything bad, did not even lock the door of his room. After killing Gurgen, safarov tried to kill the second Armenian officer, Hayk Makuchyan. Fortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful.
On April 13, 2006, thanks to the efforts of Armenian attorney Nazeli Vardanyan and another Armenian officer, Hayk Demoyan, safarov was sentenced by a Budapest court to life imprisonment without a right for mercy for 30 years. During the trial, safarov changed his testimony and retracted his initial statements, explaining this by his poor command of Russian and English.
While visiting Yerevan in 2008, then Hungarian Foreign Minister Kinga Genc, when asked about the possibility of safarov's return to Azerbaijan, noted that there was such a possibility, but Hungary had no such obligation. "ramil safarov's deed was a shock and a shock to the Hungarian public. There is a possibility for safarov's return, but Hungary has no such obligation. All issues concerning safarov will be considered very seriously. The most important question is whether safarov will serve a life sentence in Azerbaijan or not," the Minister said.
Shocked Hungary did not believe safarov and the Azerbaijani authorities. However, not for long. In August 2012 the Hungarian authorities represented by the Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a deal with the Azerbaijani authorities. By allowing themselves to be bribed with Azerbaijani petrodollars, Hungary exchanged the concept of justice and lawfulness for short-term gain. ramil safarov was returned to his homeland, where he was immediately released and elevated to the rank of a hero. The same day, August 31st 2012, Armenia broke off its diplomatic relations with Hungary. The relations have not been restored to this day. The Azerbaijani authorities not only compensated safarov for the "damage caused" in the form of an apartment and a title, but also elevated him to the rank of a national hero. Despite this, the European Court of Human Rights found no direct link between the State of Azerbaijan and safarov's actions. Both safarov personally and the Azerbaijani authorities remained completely unpunished.
In January 2013, Hungarian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Zsolt Cstore "explained" Budapest's position on the extradition of the criminal ramil safarov. "Nothing personal," the Hungarian diplomat claimed that "it was a completely legal decision." "Our nations are getting closer to each other, they are very similar to each other. The Azerbaijani people are very friendly and hospitable, and so is the Hungarian people," the ambassador said at the time, paying special attention to vocabulary: "There are many similar words in our languages, for example 'axe' is pronounced the same way as in Azerbaijani."
And Europe, though shocked by safarov's deed, kept silent...
At the end of the same year and the beginning of the next year, the work "Stone Dreams" by the Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli, published in the December issue of the "Friendship of Nations" magazine, received a wide public response. The book tells about the atrocities during the Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan in 1990. The novel "Stone Dreams" became the subject of special discussion in the parliament of Azerbaijan, where it was unanimously condemned and stigmatized. On 7 February, Akram Aylisli was deprived of the title of "People's Writer of Azerbaijan" and the state pension by a decree of President Ilham Aliyev. On 5 February, Aylisli's son was dismissed from the Customs Committee and the writer's wife from the children's library where she had worked as director for 30 years. Azerbaijan's Ministry of Education, "at the request" of literature teachers, decided to remove Aylisli's essays from school textbooks. The pro-government Modern Musavat party announced a reward for whoever cuts off the writer's ear. On January 31, a group of young people gathered near the writer's house (reportedly, there were students and activists from the youth branch of the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party). They were burning Aylisli's portraits and chanting "Akram, get out of the country!". Later, there was a rally in the writer's native village. Those gathered there chanted "Traitor!" and "Death to Akram!" Aylisli himself, responding to the claims, said that his goal was to show the possibility of coexistence between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. "The novel begins with an Azerbaijani rushing to save an old Armenian they want to kill. How could such a novel insult and humiliate the Azerbaijani people?" he notes.
And Europe was silent again... Silent when Armenian prisoners were tortured and killed in Azerbaijani prisons...
On April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale aggression against Artsakh, for the first time using drones en masse. At that time Israeli-made drones. As a result of the rocket and artillery fire from BM-21 ("Grad") launcher in the direction of Martuni, Vaginak Grigoryan, born in 2004, was killed and two other children - 12-year-old Vardan Andreasyan and 11-year-old Gevorg Grigoryan - were wounded. Schools, hospitals, residential houses were all targeted by Azerbaijani attacks. Numerous cases of beheadings and mocking of the bodies of the dead are known. the soldier Kyaram Sloyan was killed and beheaded. Photos of the murderers with the "trophy" - the head of Karam - appeared on the Internet. Later, Aliyev rewarded these "heroic" thugs with high awards. One of the most monstrous cases was the murder of old people in the village of Talysh. When the shelling of the village began, Gagik Khalapyan, the son of the murdered men, took his six children and wife to safety. There was not enough room in the car for everyone. Gagik's parents, Valera and Rasemela, could not leave the house on foot because of their elderly grandmother. The thugs burst into the village and shot Valera Khalapyan and his wife, Rasmeela, and 92-year-old Marusya Khalapyan. The bandits cut off the old people's ears.
And once again Europe remained deaf to the war crimes committed by Azerbaijanis....
And then there was the war of 2020, when Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh with the open support of Turkey, the second largest NATO country, using the entire NATO arsenal, mercenaries and banned weapons. And little Artsakh confronted a huge Turkey for 44 days. The war, during which the Azerbaijanis again "distinguished themselves" by shooting prisoners - numerous videos even then were published in the media and social networks, torture of soldiers and civilians, killing unarmed invalids and women. After the war, a "trophy park" appeared in Baku, an important part of which was an "exhibition" of the helmets of murdered Armenians. It was nothing short of Vereshchagin's apotheosis of war in the worst sense of the word.
True, during the war Europe and the civilized West called for an end to the fighting and even mediated, but to no avail. They were mostly flatulent, non-targeted statements. And as usual, lack of proper reaction generates new crimes.
There is more.
Being enraged by the May success of last year, on the night of September 13 of this year Azerbaijan launched a large-scale aggression against the sovereign territory of Armenia. In addition to territorial losses Armenia has more than 200 killed. And again shootings of prisoners, tortures, beheadings and mocking of the bodies. "We will provide all the facts in the videos. But there are shots when it is simply impossible to watch. Azerbaijanis dismembered a female soldier, cut off her legs, fingers, stripped her...," Armenian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Edvard Asryan told a briefing for foreign ambassadors in Jermuk. Later, videos of the shooting of captured Armenian soldiers by Azerbaijani "heroes" appeared in the network. The location of one of them and the identities of two soldiers were identified. According to Siranush Sahakyan, representative of the interests of prisoners of war, chairman of the Center for International and Comparative Law, the video of the shooting of Armenian prisoners of war published in social networks was made at one of Ishkhanasar positions. "On September 13 with the participation of Azerbaijani soldiers. This is a newly created Commando unit, they are trained in Turkey, and some support is of course provided as a NATO member country," Sahakyan said.
The videos are so appalling that foreign ministries of many countries issued angry demands to find and punish those responsible. Baku, having realized that they had overreacted and that the situation was getting out of control, rushed to say that they would conduct an investigation. The General Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan swore it had launched an investigation into the videos that had circulated online. Of course, we can imagine this "investigation" safarov, decorated by Aliyev personally, to help.
Representatives of European organizations did not stand aside either. But in the general chorus of outraged demands, one can already hear the trends of attempts to equate the victim and the perpetrator. Mr. Toivo Klaar, EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, initially expressed himself unambiguously negative about the published video and then suddenly changed his mind. "Another horrible video has emerged of Armenian prisoners of war apparently being executed. If this video is proven to be authentic then this is a war crime that needs to be investigated and the perpetrators punished," Klaar noted, then added hours later: "Today I have been sent several videos apparently showing war crimes committed against Azerbaijanis. Also these need to be investigated and if authentic perpetrators need to be held responsible. The conflict has left deep wounds on both sides and to heal accountability is needed."
