DND Special Report
Documentation of brutalities and illegal occupation is very important to tell the truth to those who do not know what is happening and what happened in subjugated areas. Remembrance and transferring facts to next generation also needs honest gathering facts, documentation and presentation of facts to future. Here, one should look at recently released Documentary titled “Shoot of gravestones”, produced by the International Eurasian Press Fund (IEPF), with the support of the Council on State Support to NGOs under the Auspices of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Ten-minute documentary film is the tragic story of the destruction of the Azerbaijani village of Ashagi Abdulrahmanly of the Fuzuli district, which was under Armenian occupation for 6 months in 1993.
During these six months, absolutely all the houses in the village were destroyed to the ground, vandals shot and destroyed all the graves, including the graves of relatives of the author of the film, a native of Ashagi Abdulrahmanly, Umud Mirzayev.
Umud Mirzayev who is also the President of IEPF is a passionate and courageous intellectual of Azerbaijan whose heart bleeds whenever he saw destroyed village where he spent his childhood. One can always see tears in his eyes and feels his chocking voice when he shows destroyed graves of his relative to visitors.
He believes that every citizen should be educated about the facts of invasion. Therefore, he arranged visits of over 100 media and civil society representatives representing France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Uzbekistan, Russia, Qatar, Pakistan and Vietnam during last 10 years to areas bordered with the occupied territories, and the village, part of which was liberated from occupation.
During presenting the documentary to observers, Umud Mirzayev informed participants that the situation in the occupied territories has been published by the UN Human Rights Council in five languages in recent months. He pointed out that the social movie “Shoot of gravestones” has been featured at various sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and in separate discussions.
It is important to mentioned that representative of the IEPF Anastasia Lavrina presented the movie in the International Peace Bureau on the workshop on challenges of a common security policy in Eurasia in September 2019.
Screening of documentary was attended by MP Ganira Pashayeva, Secretary of the Writers’ Union of Azerbaijan, Rashad Majid, writer Yunus Oguz, representative of Presidential Administration Vugar Salimov, Deputy Chairman of NGO Public Council, Farasat Gurbanov, Associate Professor of Journalism and Journalism at Baku State University.
There are several similarities among illegal occupations of Nagorno-Karabakh and Kashmir. There are much similarities among Nagorno-Karabakh and Eastern Ukraine —Donbass Region and Kashmir—- The most categorical resemblance is “brutal and illegal Invasion”. There is another resemblance among them—-Criminal Silence of United Nations which is supposed to safeguard weaker against powerful but is actually and practically doing otherwise. Pakistan and Ukraine should also continue documentation about what is happening in their respective regions those are under occupation.
