The British Express news portal has published an article by a journalist John Varga headlined “They destroyed everything’: Inside the war-torn lands of Azerbaijan’s Hiroshima.”
The article features the impressions of the British Express journalist, who has recently visited the liberated territories of Azerbaijan.
“We didn’t expect this level of hatred. They destroyed everything.” The words are spoken by Araz Imanov, Senior Adviser of the Special Representative Office of Azerbaijani President in the liberated territories of the Karabakh Economic Region (except Shusha district), who is acting as my guide during a two-day visit organised by the Azerbaijani government to the liberated territories.
As we drive through the war-torn landscape, we pass abandoned Armenian defensive positions, villages and once vibrant cities raised to the ground, desecrated cemeteries and hundreds of kilometres of territory infested with lethal mines. The destruction and devastation is almost total, yet very little of it was inflicted by military means and warfare. The evidence speaks overwhelmingly of a calculated and deliberate attempt to eradicate any trace of the Azerbaijani people and their culture from these lands,” the journalist says.
“The region was once famous for its silk and textile manufacturers who among other things produced Karabakh carpets, known for their vivid and flamboyant colours. It is also home to the Karabakh horse that is the national animal of Azerbaijan – one of which was presented as a gift to the late British monarch Queen Elizabeth II last May,” Varga notes.
“A Newsweek article on March 16, 1992, reported on a massacre of civilians by Armenian forces in the village of Khojaly, saying that many of them had been shot at close range while trying to flee and “some had their faces mutilated, others were scalped”. Some 600,000 Azerbaijanis were forced to flee their homes in Karabakh, becoming internally displaced people (IDPs) in the process. Azerbaijan launched a second war in late September 2020 to liberate its territories, which lasted six weeks.
Although Armenian leaders in Karabakh insist on their right to independence, the UN Security Council has recognised these territories as being indisputably part of Azerbaijan,” John Varga says.