An apple by residents of Mountainous Karabakh to the People and Government of Armenia, Central Committee of the Party, and Public Authorities.
Dear Compatriots:
With this, the afflicted people of Karabakh appealing to you as our situation is worse than it has ever been even under the tyrannical Khans and Musavats.
None of us are now safe to leave our houses or to return to our home in the evening. Our honor is being insulted. Our dignity and rights are being denied. No one is listening to our voice of protest. No one is listening to our supplications. We have sent hundreds of requests to the Central Government in Moscow and to the Government of Azerbaijan, and the answer to all of that has been total silence or fanatic persecution against us and our children.
Today dozens of young Armenians of Karabakh are illegally imprisoned or denied employment. They have pushed us to a point where we have to leave our ancestral lands and become refugee people without a fatherland. The tyrants are not satisfied with that. They are insulting and violating the corpses of our dead and forcing us to resort to criminal activities. Of the many instances let us mention a few so that you can visualize what is happening in Karabakh.
Two years ago in the center of Aghdam, they killed a young man, Avanessian. When they asked the Azerbaijani as to why he killed an innocent passerby, his obscene answer was, “I was aiming at the bird. My bullet got him. Whatever the fine is, I can pay.”
A year and a half ago in front of the Party Regional Committee of Shushi two Azerbaijanis stopped a communist agronomist of Karabakh and said, “We were going to kill an Armenian at this moment. You turned up.” And they shot him on the spot. To this day, the criminal remains unpunished because he is a relative of the Azerbaijan prosecutor and the brother of Bilarov, the Vice President of the Executive Committee of the Karabakh Soviet.
The chief of the Martuni Region Sovkhoz, Grisha Solomonian, was killed and his body thrown on the side of the road. Two other youths, tractor drivers, were killed at night. And none of the criminals have even been apprehended because they are Azerbaijanis.
They killed the 10 year old son of the chief of the local Martuni Sovkhoz, Benik Movsesian; they mutilated and violated his body. This time, too, the government was not able to “apprehend the criminals.” They would never have been apprehended if people’s patience had not been exhausted and the family of the victim itself had not apprehended the villains.
[Description of the means by which justice was nevertheless evaded in this case]
The criminals ended up with 5 year of imprisonment and 5 years probation. The State police responded to the anger of the public by spraying sewage water over them from fire engines. The guards opened fire on the father of the victim who was running right and left not knowing what to do. Then there were fatal bullets fired as the father’s family was trying to reach him. Twelve were killed and their bodies have not been brought out yet. Only then did the people, boiling with anger, attack the criminals, kill them, and burn their bodies.
The chauvinist leaders of Azerbaijan had planned this event and were not late in concluding it their way. Alikhanov, the President of the Council of Soviets and the person who has special feelings against the patriots of Mountainous Karabakh, reached Stepanakert, gathered all the leaders, declared that there is an anti-Soviet nationalist organization in the region and that his compatriots were victims of this alleged organization and that this is the result of nationalism provoked by Soviet Armenia.
[…]
“There is no nationalism here”, declared the official Akhundov at a meeting of the party members. “This is a feud between two families.” At any rate he warned by shaking his fist at those present: “Forget about your demand to join Armenia. You should know that Mountainous Karabakh is and will remain an integral part of Azerbaijan. No one who cares about his head can stand up and insist to the contrary.” Upon his departure, there began the days of Stepanakert which reminded us of the horrible time of 1918-1920.
[…]
The militia and the state security personnel that came from Baku and filled the city with foreign soldiers surrounded the center of the region and began an unending series of questions and persecutions as a means to demoralize its people. They’re imprisoning all those who dare and all those who care. Those who protest against the arbitrary decisions are released of their duties and persecuted. The fate of the Armenians of the region is in the hands of all the old and new traitors, spies, and their like. There is no end to this. And if there is, it is the end of every Armenian situation where there have been life and death struggles for defense until now.
[…]
The Armenians of Karabakh are awaiting salvation from you, people of the motherland.
[Asbarez, September 19, 1967]
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 47-48.
Image – Shushi
