“We regularly take foreign guests, journalists, politicians and public figures to the liberated lands so that they can see and know that we have not only liberated our territory from occupation, we have liberated the whole region from Armenian fascism. Today, we are restoring historical justice by rebuilding these territories,” said President Ilham Aliyev as he met with the families of martyrs and Karabakh war veterans, Report informs, citing AzerTag.
“Unfortunately, our people have been facing injustice for many years. In the 1920s, our people suffered two major blows. First, in 1920. At that time, the Soviet government tore our historical lands of Zangazur apart from Azerbaijan and annexed it to Armenia. After that, Azerbaijanis of that region were deported. Secondly, in 1923, an artificial entity was created in our territory – the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, although there were no grounds for its creation. There was no historical basis, there was no geographical basis, there was no economic basis. There was no basis at all. Simply put, this artificial entity was injected into our souls so that it could sit there like a ticking bomb and explode at the right time. And this is what happened. On 7 July 1923, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region was established. Its central city was our Khankandi settlement. It was also named after executioner Stepan Shaumyan – Stepanakert,” the head of state said.
“Then there were other blows. The deportation of Azerbaijanis from the territory of Armenia – the lands of ancient Azerbaijan in 1940-1950, the rise of Armenian separatism in the late 1980s and the failure of the Soviet government to react to it. On the contrary, they provoked the separatists. Their supporters laid claims on us,” President Ilham Aliyev added.