Genocide isn’t just about mass killing. It’s not just a horrific bloodbath caught in photographs and buried in witness testimony. It’s a crime—defined by law—with a purpose baked into its core. It’s not just about tragedy. It’s about intent. Cold, calculated, systemic intent. And that’s why the road to recognizing the Khojaly massacre and the broader campaign of mass killings against Azerbaijanis runs not through raw emotion, but through hard-nosed legal argument built on history, ideology, and deliberate hate-fueled propaganda.
If the 20th century taught international law anything—from Rwanda to Srebrenica—it’s that the threshold for labeling something genocide rests on one defining feature: dolus specialis, a fancy Latin term for “specific intent.” It’s what separates genocide from war crimes, crimes against humanity, or just flat-out barbarism. It's not just about what was done—it’s about why it was done.
This isn’t just a moral question. It's hardwired into international law. The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention lays it out in black and white: genocide is any act committed with the intent to wipe out—fully or partially—a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That includes:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm
- Inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction
- Imposing measures to prevent births
- Forcibly transferring children to another group
But the golden thread tying all these acts together is intent. You have to show they weren’t just collateral damage. You have to prove they were the endgame.
The International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) made it crystal clear: you don’t need a written order to prove intent. You can show it through:
- Hate-filled propaganda
- Public speeches by top officials
- Victim selection based solely on ethnicity
- Brutality that defies any military logic
- A timeline of events that paints a picture of targeted extermination
Take the landmark cases Prosecutor v. Akayesu and Prosecutor v. Krstić. They showed that specific intent can be deduced from the context—who was targeted, how propaganda was weaponized, the pattern of action. You don’t need a smoking gun when the whole damn forest is on fire.
Khojaly wasn’t a skirmish gone wrong. It was a massacre. According to Human Rights Watch, Memorial, and other international watchdogs, over 600 Azerbaijani civilians—women, children, the elderly—were butchered in one night. Victims were burned alive, mutilated, beheaded. Over a thousand were wounded. Hundreds were taken hostage. The sheer savagery—torture, dismemberment, the murder of infants—screams dolus specialis.
But it wasn’t just the act. It was the buildup. Years before Khojaly, a propaganda machine was already in full swing in Armenia, systematically dehumanizing Azerbaijanis. Intellectuals, politicians, and state leaders painted them as aliens, threats, barbarians—people who didn’t belong.
That rhetoric wasn’t just hateful—it was legally damning. The Rwanda tribunal handed down life sentences to radio broadcasters who called the Tutsis inyenzi—cockroaches. Why? Because words kill. Words lay the tracks for genocide.
When the Rwanda tribunal ruled in The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, it laid down a truth we’d be foolish to ignore: genocide doesn’t start with bullets. It starts with ideas. With narratives. With the neighbor turned enemy. The Tutsi were called filth, vermin, parasites—until the machetes came out. And in Armenia, that same kind of language came from the very top—from officials, ideologues, commanders. The message was clear: Azerbaijanis weren’t people. They were a problem. And problems need to be “solved.”
Under international law, incitement and hate speech aren’t just ugly—they’re proof. In both Rwanda and Bosnia, courts treated media statements and ideological manifestos as legitimate evidence that the violence wasn’t random—it was premeditated.
By the late 1980s, as tensions over Karabakh reached a boil, Armenian society saw a chilling trend: full-scale dehumanization of Azerbaijanis. Their narrative machine pumped out messages like:
- Azerbaijanis are “barbarians,” “wild hordes,” a “threat to Christian civilization”
- Their presence on “Armenian land” was a historical mistake
- Coexistence was impossible due to “ethnic incompatibility”
And then there was Zori Balayan. One of Armenia’s most vocal ideologues, his book Revival of the Soul wasn’t some fringe pamphlet. It was widely read, discussed—and horrifying. Balayan didn’t just defend torture and killing. He described them with perverse delight. This wasn’t abstract ideology—it was a blueprint. It gave moral cover to what happened in Khojaly.
So let’s call this what it is.
Not a “tragedy.” Not a “clash.” Not a “fog-of-war” incident.
Khojaly was genocide. It meets the legal bar. It hits every precedent.
It wasn’t just cruelty. It was intentional annihilation.
The eyes of the dead won’t tell you lies. And the words of the living—those who still remember, still grieve, still fight to be heard—are the echoes of truth that the world can’t keep silencing forever.
Justice doesn’t come fast. But it comes. And for Khojaly, it’s long past due.
Zori Balayan didn’t beat around the bush. He wrote:
"If Azerbaijanis had stayed in Armenia, what would’ve happened to us? We would’ve gone extinct."
That isn’t just a throwaway line—it’s a straight-up call for ethnic cleansing, a green light for expulsion, elimination, and total erasure.
And it didn’t stop with Balayan. The record is littered with quotes from Armenian heads of state that scream dolus specialis—legal speak for deliberate, targeted intent to destroy an ethnic group. Let’s break it down, American-style—names, dates, quotes, receipts:
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia’s first president. During a closed-door meeting in Khankendi (as reported by Azerbaijani sources), he allegedly said:
"I’m proud that Armenia is the only monoethnic state in the region. We got rid of the Azerbaijanis."
Let that sink in. That kind of statement is textbook genocidal intent—on par with what Rwandan officials said before the machetes came out. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) saw declarations like this as direct evidence of a plan to exterminate.
Robert Kocharyan, Armenia’s second president, in a 2001 interview, dropped this line:
"Azerbaijanis and Armenians are ethnically incompatible."
That phrase? It’s not just loaded. It’s dynamite. In international law, that’s a flashing red signal for forced separation, removal, and elimination. The Bosnian tribunals treated “ethnic incompatibility” as proof of genocidal doctrine—straight from the Nazi playbook.
Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s third president and one of the military architects of the Khojaly massacre, took it further. In a 2000 interview with British journalist Thomas de Waal, he chillingly bragged:
"Before Khojaly, Azerbaijanis thought we wouldn’t dare target civilians. We were able to break that stereotype."
There it is—raw, unfiltered, intentional. That’s not war. That’s terror by design. A message carved in blood: no difference between soldier and civilian, between child and combatant.
These weren’t just words tossed in a bar. They shaped the battlefield. They laid the foundation for action. In Khojaly, Armenian forces under Sargsyan’s command, backed by the 366th Motor Rifle Regiment, carried out what can only be described as a scorched-earth ethnic purge. No prisoners. Retreating civilians were gunned down. Women and children were hacked, shot, burned. This wasn’t war—it was ritualized slaughter.
And that brings us back to the courtroom logic of Rwanda and Bosnia. In Prosecutor v. Krstić, the ICTY ruled that killing 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica constituted genocide—because the goal was to wipe out part of a people. Even though women and children were spared, the intent to destroy the group was clear.
Khojaly? Same playbook, different chapter. The mass killing of hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians—whole families wiped out—combined with high-level rhetoric celebrating “ethnic purity,” crosses every legal line.
Khojaly Wasn’t an Outlier—It Was Part of a Pattern
As horrific as it was, Khojaly wasn’t a one-off. It was the bloodiest installment in a broader campaign of ethnic cleansing that swept through Armenia, Karabakh, and the occupied Azerbaijani districts from the late 1980s into the early ‘90s. This was no spontaneous riot. It was a coordinated operation—military, political, ideological.
Here’s the body count:
– Over 250,000 Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia
– Nearly 750,000 displaced from Karabakh and surrounding regions
– More than 900 towns and villages with majority-Azerbaijani populations were wiped off the map
– Tens of thousands killed or missing, including women, kids, elders
This wasn’t just war. It was a campaign—a system. And the goal? Erase the people. Erase the memory.
Genocide law isn’t just about killing people. It’s about erasing who they were—physically, spiritually, culturally. Destroying mosques, cemeteries, historical sites, even names on maps—it’s all part of the same endgame. That’s what happened in Bosnia. Serbian forces bulldozed mosques, burned archives, and carved slogans into walls: “This land is clean.” The ICTY called it what it was—genocide. The same logic applies to what Armenia did.
Here’s what they did to Azerbaijanis during the 30-year occupation:
– Leveled hundreds of mosques, including Islamic architectural gems in Aghdam, Fuzuli, Zangilan, and Jabrayil
– Desecrated graves, looted shrines, vandalized tombs
– Wiped Azerbaijani names off the map—literally
– Torched archives, destroyed epigraphy, erased manuscripts
Ter-Petrosyan’s boast about a “monoethnic Armenia” wasn’t just racist bluster. It was a policy statement. Starting in 1988, a quiet campaign to push Azerbaijanis off their ancestral land began—and the world just watched.
Reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and OSCE back it up:
– Azerbaijani homes were torched or seized by “new owners”
– Civilians were shot at checkpoints, kidnapped, raped, tortured
– Deportations happened under the watchful eye—and often with the help—of armed paramilitaries
– In villages like Meshali, Garadaghly, and Aghdaban, entire populations were massacred
So here’s the question international prosecutors always ask:
Why do regular soldiers butcher civilians with such savagery? Why burn homes with families still inside? Why dismember, torture, rape children?
The answer: ideology.
Once you convince people their neighbors are monsters—subhuman, dangerous, alien—there’s no moral line left to cross. In Armenia, this was a full-spectrum operation:
Propaganda.
Literature.
Schoolbooks.
Religious sermons.
State-run media.
All funneling the same message:
Azerbaijanis are barbarians. They’re the threat. They must be removed.
Look at Rwanda. Businessman Georges Rutaganda didn’t pull a trigger, didn’t lead a battalion. But he funded radio broadcasts that called Tutsis “inyenzi”—cockroaches. He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the genocide. Why? Because his voice helped fuel the fire.
So here’s the bottom line, America:
If we’re going to stand for anything—truth, justice, the rule of law—we can’t keep ignoring Khojaly. We can’t keep pretending this was just a war story from a far-off land. It was genocide. And just like Rwanda, just like Srebrenica, the receipts are all there. Words. Deeds. Graves.
Now it’s time for recognition. Not someday. Now.
Let’s call it what it is, again—and louder this time. In the Armenian case, the pieces of the genocidal puzzle weren’t scattered—they were stacked.
– Zori Balayan — the ideologue, the mouthpiece, the one who gave the violence its words
– Levon Ter-Petrosyan — the head of state, bragging about “ethnic purity” like it’s a badge of honor
– Robert Kocharyan — the war-time deputy commander who spoke of “ethnic incompatibility” as if he were writing Nuremberg’s second act
– Serzh Sargsyan — the military commander who openly admitted he shattered the belief that Armenians “wouldn’t touch civilians”
Each of them laid bricks in the wall of dolus specialis—the specific intent to destroy Azerbaijanis as a people. This wasn’t war. This was method. And international law has a name for it: genocide.
The Case of Khojaly: A Legal Precedent That Checks All the Boxes
The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide lays out five acts which, if done with genocidal intent, constitute genocide. Khojaly meets at least three:
- Killing members of the group — Over 600 civilians murdered, including women, children, the elderly. This wasn’t a firefight—it was a massacre, soaked in sadism: dismemberment, burning, decapitations.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm — Hundreds wounded. Thousands taken hostage. Victims tortured, raped, humiliated. The trauma? Intergenerational.
- Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group — The town was blockaded. No food, no water, no medical care. No humanitarian corridor. It was a death trap by design.
And all of this played out against a backdrop of open, unapologetic ideological incitement. From the top down, Armenia was broadcasting its intent: to cleanse the land of Azerbaijanis.
Let’s be crystal clear: dolus specialis is the legal cornerstone of genocide. And international courts—ICTY, ICTR—have laid out exactly how to identify it:
– Public statements by national leaders
– Systematic hate propaganda across media and literature
– Targeted violence against a single ethnic group
– Coordinated and strategic execution of the acts
Now apply that lens to Khojaly:
– Sargsyan himself said the goal was to “change the mindset” of Azerbaijanis—translation: terrorize the civilians into submission
– Ter-Petrosyan literally boasted that Armenia was the only monoethnic state in the region
– Tactics used in Khojaly—indiscriminate slaughter, psychological warfare, destruction of homes—were textbook tools of genocide
The ICTY recognized a nearly identical cocktail of factors in Srebrenica as genocide—even without a written order. In Rwanda, radio hosts who called Tutsis “cockroaches” were convicted for fueling genocidal flames. Armenian rhetoric was just as venomous—sometimes more direct.
To Bring Genocide Charges, Four Conditions Must Be Met:
- The crime matches the acts outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention
- There is evidence of dolus specialis — specific intent to destroy the group
- There are identifiable victims and perpetrators
- There is a link between the ideologues and the people who carried out the crimes
In Khojaly, all four boxes are checked. And what’s more, the statements from Armenian leaders—prima facie evidence of intent—are indicia of genocidal intent under the legal standards of Akayesu, Bagosora, Krstić, Karadžić. This isn’t just moral outrage. This is legal precedent.
Recognition Isn’t Just Symbolic—It’s a Legal Shield
The Genocide Convention’s Article I is as clear as a congressional subpoena:
“The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”
That means:
– Azerbaijan has every right to demand international recognition of Khojaly as genocide
– International institutions that refuse to acknowledge it violate their own commitment to impartial justice
– Armenia, by refusing to punish those responsible—or even denounce their statements—is culpable, if not as a perpetrator, then as an enabler
Let’s not forget: In the 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia ruling, the International Court of Justice ruled that a state can be guilty not by killing, but by failing to prevent genocide and failing to punish it after the fact. In Armenia’s case, the killers were not just left alone—they were decorated.
Systemic, Historical, and State-Sanctioned: The Broader Campaign
Khojaly wasn’t born in a vacuum. Violence against Azerbaijanis has been cyclic, ideological, and historically rooted:
– 1905–1907: Pogroms and mass killings in Yerevan, Nakhchivan, Zangezur
– 1918–1920: Ethnic cleansings in Baku, Shusha, Guba, Shamakhy, Ganja
– 1948–1953: Deportations from Armenia to the Kura-Aras lowlands
– 1987–1989: 250,000 Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia
The dream of an “Armenia for Armenians” isn’t new. It’s the spine of Armenian ultranationalism. And in the ‘90s, that ideology found fertile ground for genocidal propaganda. No internal resistance. No checks. Just the next logical step in a century-long campaign of exclusion and extermination.
And international courts have made it clear: genocide is a crime of coordination. It takes organization. Resources. Bureaucracy. It doesn’t happen in a back alley—it happens with ledgers and memos and chain-of-command silence. That’s why responsibility lies not just with killers, but with institutions that:
– Did nothing to stop the crimes
– Refused to punish the guilty
– Actively helped build the ideology that justified it all
In Armenia’s case:
– The top leadership (Ter-Petrosyan, Kocharyan, Sargsyan) proudly endorsed the ethnic cleansings
– The Armenian military and armed groups operated in lockstep across captured Azerbaijani regions
– Those most directly responsible—Sargsyan, Ohanyan, Hovannisian—weren’t prosecuted. They were promoted.
Khojaly wasn’t a tragedy. It was a state project. A project of erasure. And until the world recognizes that, justice will remain just a word.
This—this right here—is the hallmark of systematic genocide. Just like Rwanda. Just like Bosnia. When a state refuses to investigate mass atrocities, when it doesn’t disavow the perpetrators, when it turns killers into national heroes—that’s not neglect. That’s complicity. The International Court of Justice said it loud and clear: when a state fails to disown or prosecute genocide, it signals endorsement.
Let’s spell it out one more time, for every policymaker, journalist, and human rights crusader out there:
Khojaly wasn’t just a wartime horror. It was genocide. And here’s why:
– The victims were exclusively from one ethnic group: Azerbaijanis
– The violence was extraordinarily brutal, far beyond any military necessity
– Political leaders acknowledged, celebrated, and justified the violence
– Azerbaijani cultural heritage was systematically destroyed
– Mass expulsions and deportations were carried out under state control
– And the mountain of evidence meets the legal bar for dolus specialis — that cold-blooded intent that defines genocide
So let’s stop sugarcoating it. Let’s stop hiding behind diplomatic euphemisms like “tragedy” or “complex conflict” or “alleged war crimes.” Khojaly was an act of genocide. Full stop. The kind international courts have already recognized—in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Cambodia.
And here’s the dangerous part: silence creates precedent.
The failure of the international community to name Khojaly for what it was isn’t just a moral failure. It’s a legal one. It sends the message that ethnic cleansing is only punishable when it happens to the geopolitically relevant. When the victims sit at the “important” table.
If Azerbaijanis can be slaughtered, raped, deported, and erased—and the world shrugs? Then what exactly are we even defending when we talk about human rights, the rule of law, or “never again”?
Azerbaijan has every legal, moral, and political right to act. To push. To demand.
– To seek formal international recognition of Khojaly as an act of genocide
– To initiate independent international investigations and tribunals
– To invoke the legal precedent of genocide in negotiations, diplomacy, and global forums
– To hold accountable—by name and by law—those who incited, ordered, or executed the killings: Balayan, Sargsyan, Kocharyan, Ter-Petrosyan, and their cohorts
Let’s not forget: genocide has no statute of limitations. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t get filed away. It doesn’t get rebranded. It either gets called out—or it gets repeated.
And that’s what Khojaly is. It’s a name. A place. A crime.
But more than that, it’s a mirror.
It’s a test. Of truth. Of justice. Of whether humanity still gives a damn when the victims aren’t NATO members or G7 economies.
Azerbaijan will keep fighting for recognition—not for vengeance, but for protection. Not just to honor the past, but to guard the future.
Because if the genocide of Azerbaijanis can be explained away, ignored, or justified—then it can happen again. And that’s not just Azerbaijan’s problem. That’s ours.