BOSTON (defence.az, Twitter, Press Herald) – Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston has proclaimed February 26, 2021 as Khojaly Commemoration Day. The proclamation quotes Human Rights Watch as stating this was the largest massacre of the 1990s and that it was committed by Armenian armed forces with the support of a Soviet Russian rifle regiment.
According to Azerbaijani sources, the proclamation was adopted on the initiative of Roza Shahzade, director of the New England-based Azerbaijan Center.
Armenians in turn have begun to contact the mayor’s office to protest this proclamation.
A similar proclamation issued in Portland, Maine, was backed by the Azerbaijan Society of Maine, but it called the event a genocide, not massacre. Audrey Altstadt, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has written books about Azerbaijan, noted that the event did not fit the internationally accepted definition of genocide.
Approximately 50-60 Azerbaijanis live in Portland, along with an estimated 100-200 Armenians. Alstadt said that a campaign backed by the Azerbaijani embassy in Washington to promote Khojaly Remembrance Day began around ten years ago, and added: “It’s interesting to me that you would have a small community of 50 to 60 Azerbaijanis and it would cross their minds to approach the mayor for something like this. That used to not be the case.”
Portland Mayor Kate Snyder, after Armenians criticized the Portland proclamation as historically inaccurate and part of an international propaganda campaign, apologized and promised to change the review process concerning proclamations. She declared, “One of the many lessons learned over the course of the last few days is that, in the case of international issues, especially when there’s a conflict, there needs to be much deeper scrutiny of how and if the city of Portland is weighing into that issue.”
She also said she would find a way to recognize the Armenian Genocide on its anniversary date of commemoration on April 24.
Yorumlar kapatıldı.