Original subtitles

Vilnius, Lithuania

I am Richardas Lapaitis, a war correspondent.

I am going back 20 years to a story that has haunted me all this time.

It might have no end, though.

Just as good and evil have no end,

life or death,

justice or denial.

ENDLESS CORRIDOR

Naftalan, Khojaly survivors refugee camp

It's between Askeran and Agdam.

This is my uncle.

The old man.

His name is Allahverdi.

This is Zakariya’s wife.

It's my brother Zakariya’s wife.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of the evil

is for good man to do nothing.

Metamorphosis

Lazdijai, Lithuanian-Polish border

Ricardas Lapaitis Traveller - war journalist

I wasn't just a traveler.

I was always seeking out something different.

Each journey was a marvellous adventure.

When I cycled from Lithuania to Yerevan,

through all the towns destroyed by the earthquake,

I told them that I was planning to travel through Nagorno-Karabakh

– the fighting hadn't yet flared up –

I wanted to go through the Azerbaijani mountains and ride across the country.

They told me: ‘Don't risk it – they'll kill you in those mountains!’

It was in Yerevan that I first heard that I could be killed by Azerbaijanis.

Richard canceled his trip

and returned by Moscow home to Lithuania.

But a couple of years later

he decided after all to travel to Azerbaijan.

He could not get the Armenians’ words out of his head.

Danger can be very attractive.

He booked his ticked.

When he arrived to Baku,

he realised that there really was a war on.

He took a night train to Agdam,

town close to Nagorno-Karabakh.

I didn't know that I would arrive on the day

that the whole country found out about the Khojaly tragedy.

I didn’t know there had been a massacre.

What I saw over the following days changed my life completely,

my understanding of humanity.

I was later to call it ‘the trip to hell’.

Tbilisi, Georgia

In Azerbaijan and Armenia today,

Georgi Vanyan Armenian peace activist

everybody knows that the Karabakh movement

was incited from the Kremlin.

What started as an environmental movement in Armenia

was transformed into the Karabakh movement.

Suddenly the slogans ‘Karabakh is ours’

and “Miacum”, which means ‘Unification’,

were everywhere.

In a matter of hours,

cells of the Karabakh movement were created in Armenia.

Only the KGB had the resources to do this.

The Karabakh movement acquired almost holy status

and the people began to trust this committee unconditionally.

It was at this time that members of the movement were arrested.

I describe these arrests as a ‘business trip’

to two notorious KGB jails in Moscow.

After six-months of brainwashing and propaganda,

during which the members of the Karabakh movement were practically venerated as holy martyrs,

the slogans surreptitiously changed.

Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s call to be good neighbours

was changed to ‘Fight on to victory!’,

‘Karabakh is ours!’

‘KA-RA-BAKH!’

In 1988 when the Karabakh movement began,

I knew about it a couple of months before I read about it in the newspapers.

Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan Ideologue of Karabakh Armenians secessionist movement

I took my family, my wife and children,

and we flew to what was a completely new place for me,

somewhere I had never been, Karabakh.

Karabakh is a unique Azerbaijani cultural island,

where the most well renowned MUGAM music talents were nurtured.

At the beginning of the 19th century,

the first opera and operetta in the Muslim East were written on the basis of MUGAM

one of the most important pillars of Azerbaijani culture.

For centuries, the land of Karabakh was famous for its tolerance

and both Muslims and followers of the local Albanian Christian church enjoyed peaceful coexistence

as they did a Christianization of Azerbaijan,

where a sizeable Jewish community also enjoyed good relations.

After the annexation of the Karabakh khanate to Russia,

more than 100 thousand Armenians were resettled from Iran and Turkey to Azerbaijan

and mainly to Karabakh

where they felt safe for the next hundred years.

Clashes between the Azerbaijani and Armenian population

began early on the 20th century

and in the 1918

Armenians and Bolsheviks massacred the civilian population of Baku.

The Azerbaijan democratic republic was from 1918 to 1920

the first democratic republic in the Muslim East

and it included Nagorno-Karabakh

as was recognized by the British commander Allied troops on site.

Despite this in 1923 the Soviet Union granted

autonomous status to the mountainous part of Karabakh

within the borders of the newly created Soviet Azerbaijan.

The region's borders were drawn to include villages

and exclude as many Azerbaijani villages as possible.

This resulted in an Armenian majority.

In a show of sinister symbolism

the provincial capital of the new autonomy was named Stepanakert

after Armenian Commissar Stepan Shaumyan,

mastermind of the 1918 Baku massacre.

Some 17 years later in the early 1990s with the collapse with the Soviet Union

Azerbaijan and Armenia regain their independence

no longer restrained by the limitations of membership of a common Union.

And expansionist ambitions re-emerged.

At first, I had serious doubts – and I say it openly –

about the intellectual capacity of my nation.

Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan Ideologue of Karabakh Armenians secessionist movement

We had been slaughtered

and people responded by flocking to the memorial

to the genocide in Ottoman Turkey,

laying flowers and lighting candles.

That was when – and I don't hide it –

I decided that we should start to respond properly.

Every nation, without exception,

has to fight to come into being or is revived through fighting.

A nation is born through the pain of vast lands and numbers of people.

Our nation was revived.

We organized self-defense groups in the villages,

collected weapons and distributed them to our fighters.

After my arrival in Agdam

and saw a horrible scene.

Agdam Karabakh city in 1992

Hundreds of corpses were brought in to the city.

More and more refugees were arriving.

As Richard walked into the Agdam hospital,

he found the young man in a horrible state.

Married only a month before.

Had been taken prisoner by the Armenians

and realized in exchanged for two cans of petrol.

His mother saw Richard's camera

and took him for a foreign journalist.

She gave me a photo and said:

“Young man go home and tell them what you have seen here.”

I realized that her dying son

reflected the fate of the town destroyed on that night.

This was the start of my journey to find and tell the truth.

Then I heard his name for the first time – Valeh.

Valeh

Richard has been writing about the survivors of the Khojaly tragedy for 20 years.

Local bus line to Naftalan

Now he learns that the young man he saw in the Agdam hospital,

the one who was held prisoner by the Armenians,

tortured half to death and swapped for a few cans of gasoline,

had survived.

Naftalan Khojaly survivors refugee camp

Had you always lived in Khojaly?

Yes I was born there,

went to school there and got married there.

Russians and other ethnic groups lived there as well.

We never thought, ‘Oh, they’re Russians, they’re Armenians.’

We were just friends

and we got on well.

Naftalan, Internet cafe

Look this is Lithuania.

I had a long journey to Azerbaijan.

Now can you show me your house?

Valeh's new home and his grandfather's house

were right next to the airport.

In early 1992 before the attack on Khojali

the Armenian forces occupied it surrounding villages

and drew out Azerbaijani population.

By 1992 Khojaly had become a second most populated town in a region

homed to about 6,000 people.

Azerbaijanis and Meskitian Turks.

Besides having the only airport of the region

Khojaly itself stood as a symbol of asylum to Azerbaijanis expelled from other places in Karabakh.

The previous October,

Armenian forces had cut the Khojaly-Agdam road connecting the town with mainland Azerbaijan.

The only way to reach it now was by helicopter.

The town had also been without electricity and gas for several months.

The Armenian assault began on the night of 25th February.

Armored vehicles from 366th regiment

surrounded Khojaly before the Armenian fighters went in and overwhelmed the local defenders.

There any possible escape rout

involves a dangerous journey across a river and through forested mountains.

Late in the evening on 25th February I was at home,

Valeh Khojaly survivor

when heavy shelling began from all sides.

I went to the window

and saw the big apple tree in my grandfather's yard

split in two by a shell.

I realized that the Armenians were already very close.

I got my wife and we ran.

Outside we saw our neighbors

running to escape the attacks of machine-guns and artillery.

Then tanks came.

Wherever they saw a crowd, they opened fire.

The people panicked – women, children, the elderly.

Everyone was sucked into the chaos.

There was never any question for me –

then or now –

that we had to liberate Khojaly from those gangs.

We provided a corridor through which they could get out safely

and told them so many times.

I was the first person to tell them about this on television.

I said we will clear Khojaly of bandit groups

and suggested that the civilian population

either hide in suitable places

or leave what will inevitably be a combat zone through this corridor.

The corridor will be safe.

However the human rights group Helsinki Watch have confirmed

that no surviving witnesses knew beforehand of a safe corridor.

And without power a televised warning seems implausible

There was only one escape route and it's was under attack from all sides.

We went down here

and crossed the river.

Valeh helped his group of 50 to cross the river

before finally take over and himself his wife on his shoulders.

As he lifted to down on the river bank he slipped exhausted back into the water

Now, soaked to the skin, he, his wife and they group

moved off in the long chain

skirting the mountains toward safety

after more than thirteen kilometers cold and exhausted

was they crossed of valley outside Askeran

They came on the fire from outsides.

It is open country

and impossible to escape.

Around 500 people lost their lives.

It was here,

near the castle,

just outside Askeran.

I had things that I couldn't even imagine.

They told me that hundreds of them were massacred.

I couldn't believe it.

I thought it was an exaggeration.

But they were describing the details.

People told me how they fled, how they crossed a big river.

It was the 25th of February, minus 12 degrees centigrade.

There were a lot of witnesses.

So I hardly had room to write down their testimonies in my diary.

In the first line were the Russian solders from the 366th regiment.

Elman Mamadov Former civic leader of Khojaly

They were wearing their body armor and flack jackets.

And after them came the Armenian gangsters.

We couldn't stay any longer and had to leave the battleground.

But they build an ambush and were waiting for us.

All our civilians, children, women, old people were massacred.

Elman Mammadov Former civic leader of Khojaly

Besides, the whole 366th motorized infantry battalion

belonging to the Soviet army was appropriated by the Armenians.

They had collected so many forces, what could Khojali do against this power.

It was impossible to hear anything because of the thunder of the guns.

And the houses – one by one – were exploding.

This was a settlement,

so naturally, besides houses, there were haystacks,

various wood constructions etc. that were burning.

The sky turned red.

The operation was planned by Colonel – now Major General – Arkady Ivanovich Ter-Tadevosyan

according to all the rules of war.

We even invited architects who made a model of Khojaly.

Our guys used this model to prepare the attack

and decide which units would attack the town and from where.

Yerevan, Armenia

Gen. Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan Commander of Khojaly assault

Yes, I devised and commanded the operation.

If you surround the enemy,

they will put up fierce resistance.

You have to leave a road for them to get out.

When we attacked a village or district

in order to destroy those illegal armed gangs,

we realized that the easier and safer it is for the population to leave,

the fewer losses we will have.

You see, this whole situation is down to politicians.

It was what they did that brought about the situation.

We didn’t play the main role.

We're dispensable: we kill them, they kill us, we die, they die.

A politician's goal is to show the whole world how important they are.

That's why they need a lot of blood!

A lot of blood!

A meat grinder to show what an important role they play!

We were under heavy fire from all sides.

Bullets were whistling overhead.

My wife was walking behind me

and suddenly I heard her cry out.

I turned and asked what's wrong.

‘Nothing,’ she said

shaking her head.

I put my hand on her side to help her move further

and felt something warm on my hand.

I saw her blood.

I froze

and she did not say anything more.

Several people came up who were behind us.

Some of them said,

‘Let's go. Don't waste your time, she's dead.’

I said,

‘Either I go with her or I stay here and die with her.’

Look, look! They are taking a woman hostage!

The lucky few was saved by friendly Azerbaijani soldiers on the way to secure Qaragaya

But there were hundreds of others

less fortunate...

We were going,

suddenly they shot my mother.

I ran to her and so that she is not moving.

My father came close to me and lifted me,

he said, - stand up, let's go.

Khazangul Amirova Khojaly survivor

I said, - no, I cannot leave my mom here.

He said, - we have to,

because Armenians may catch us.

I was just 8 years old,

I did not understand what it meant to die.

We ran a little and suddenly realized that Armenians have surrounded us.

I hold my sisters hand,

they told us that males should be separated from females

and I took my sister and stood aside.

They directed the guns to us.

They shot my sister, she was two years younger than me,

she released my hand

and fell down and we left her there as well.

Armenians took us to Askeran,

they captured us.

Valeh and the other refugees were taken to Askeran

and thrown in the basement of the local police prison.

Valeh was badly tortured.

He couldn’t move and looked like he was dead.

His face was really bruised and swollen,

he couldn't even open his mouth.

An Armenian said to him:

‘You play Karabakh music on your guitar? We'll get you for that,’

and he pressed his hands onto a hot stove, burning his fingers.

His legs were hurt,

his mouth torn open and he couldn't speak.

He didn't look human.

Valeh was in a really bad way,

worse than me,

even though I thought things couldn’t be any worse.

During his torturous weeks in captivity,

Valeh clung to the hope that Azerbaijani soldiers would have saved all the others at Qaragaya

and that his wife's body had been attended to.

Ghost 366th

Then Azerbaijan declared its independence

and refused to host any Russian military bases on its territory,

which is adjacent to Iran and Turkey.

Of course, this undermined Russia's strategic position.

Around 50 of the 350 or so remaining soldiers of the 366th Regiment were Armenian,

including the commander of its 2nd Battalion, Major Seyran Ohanyan.

Moscow

For the Karabakh Armenians,

the regiment and its large stores of weaponry were a godsend.

Prof. Yuri Pompeyev Russian writer and activist

Russia, as one of the sides, should take responsibility for what happened in Khojaly.

The 366th Regiment played the main role in Khojaly, unfortunately.

The 366th Regiment was stationed in Stepanakert and some Armenian officers joins this.

One of them is now a commander of Karabakh forces,

another is Chechen Valeriy,

and another was recently the minister of defense of Armenia.

They were with me at that time.

Moreover, it was a Russian, not USSR, regiment.

All the soldiers were drunk after Army Day on 23rd February,

there’s a lot of evidence of that.

It was basically a gang that was used by the Armenians

who were the leaders at the time

and are now ruling the country, by the current president, Serzh Sarkisyan,

and current defense minister, Seyran Ohanyan, who was then a major.

This article entitled THE GLORIOUS VICTORY OF ARMENIAN WEAPONS,

The truth about Khojaly

was written by Levon Melik Shakhnazaryan,

a leader of the Armenian Karabakh Secessionist Movement.

In the article he shows an Armenian map

named PLAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF KHOJALY.

It indicates the fourth zone of attack – on the airport – with heavy armament.

It inadvertently shows a note on the map

... ZHENYA referring to Yevgeny Nabokikh,

then commander of the third battalion of the 366th Regiment

Russia is involved too in this tragedy of the Azeri nation and this is regrettable.

That's why the repentance of Russia is very important,

especially of the former Russian leadership.

However, they are no longer leaders.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin who personally decided the fate of the 366th Regiment,

Marshal Shaposhnikov, who was the head of the Russian and Commonwealth forces

and in fact this regiment was under his command.

It is remarkable that indifference smothers everything.

The evidence of journalists, including Victoria Ivleva,

who was in the second wave of the assault,

throws up some very interesting stories.

Victoria Ivleva made that slogan –

‘Only the dead are left in Khojaly’ – the headline of her article in “Moscow News”.

Madonna from Khojaly

Now you'd better tell me the whole story about how you found this woman.

Victoria Ivleva-Yorke Photo-journalist witnessed Kojaly assault

Well, the chain was very interesting.

When you sent me the picture of the woman and the idea of looking for her, we looked all over,

but I soon realized that it was pointless to look via official channels.

I had to do it myself, using private contacts.

Shanin Hajiyev Journalist

Some looked and said yes, some said no,

but it was obvious that they weren't sure.

It was my toughest research in 25 years as a journalist.

There was one more reason, another obstacle that made it difficult.

Women from Khojaly try to hide the fact that they were held prisoner.

They don’t even go to testify,

their husbands do that instead.

Why do they hide that they were prisoners?

Because of rape.

I sent a photo to someone in Sabirabad

and at last I got a reply.

Someone recognized her, but said that she lives in another village,

gave me the name and so on.

I said go and check it out right away

and later he called back and said, ‘Yes, it's her!’

Would you like to see what she looks like now?

Right now? Yes, I would.

I've blown up the photo.

Compare the two.

Compare...

I think it's her.

Looks very similar...

Agjakend, Khojaly survivors refugee camp

Mehriban Khojaly survivor

Hello,

do you remember me?

Do you remember?

Do I look the same?

You don't speak Russian?

Where is the girl?

Where is she?

She was only two days old.

She's ill.

And she cannot speak.

Does she understand us?

No, she doesn't.

It doesn't matter.

What's her name?

Gunay.

Gunay?

Even if she doesn't understand,

please tell her that I carried her in my arms when she was just one day old.

Don't cry, Mehriban.

Don't cry. It's all over.

Do you remember how the attack began?

We were being shelled every day.

When the Armenians began firing, we hid in basements and spent hours there.

My daughter was born in a basement on 23rd of February among men and women.

I didn't leave the basement until late in the evening of 25th February,

not until the Armenian assault began.

How were you taken prisoner?

They took us from the basement.

It's me there.

Look, here you are in the picture.

How did the Armenians alllow you take these photos?

I was with the Armenians, remember.

When we moved off and I was carrying your daughter,

a soldier rode up on his horse and hit me with the bottom of his rifle

They thought that I was a prisoner, too.

My one-day-old baby fell out of my hands and you found her.

I remember you brought me the girl – And returned her to me in this place.

There she is in that picture with a blanket.

It's the same blanket on the other picture.

That's where you handed her over to me.

Ask her if she remembers that we wondered where to hide the money so that it wasn't taken?

In our boots or bras?

Yes, yes, she told me herself, hide it there.

Where did you put it?

In to your bra?

Where?

Underwear?

Ask her.

It's impolite

It's polite, don't worry.

Where did you hide the money?

I hid it there.

It's all over.

They were hard times and I don't want to go through it all again.

No, I want only one thing –

for this girl to get well.

Death valley

The men who sacrificed their lives to protect their families

not knowing that their women and children had been ambushed and murdered

actually died in vain.

It affected Richard in ways he didn't expect.

His thoughts turned to questions of right and wrong.

When he began his journey,

Richard was concerned with giving the voice to the survivors.

The people who had lost everything – children, parents and home.

And the human right to live in peace with dignity.

But the more he met and listened to people on both sides,

the more he felt they are moving through an ENDLESS CORRIDOR -

for those who killed and those who been killed.

Why they were killed and by whom are the main questions for me personally.

I am pretty sure, but it's impossible to prove it,

that all these people were killed by mistake.

They were scared and shot them at night.

They were trying to protect their own people.

They thought they were Armenians and shot them.

You think they will confess that they did it themselves?

Of course, they'll say it was us.

Their argument contrasts with what I've heard from survivors.

Archive footage shows people were shot in cold blood.

It gives the opposite answer to the question

who did it?

When the Armenian controlled corridor from Khojaly was closed to foreign media,

there was only one journalist - an Azerbaijani

who was allowed to film in the territory controlled by the Armenians.

Hello.

How are you?

At the time Richard wondered why he got this access.

And now he came to ask him directly.

I was a military cameraman at that time.

Early in the morning of 26th February when I went to the office,

my boss told me about the tragedy in Khojaly.

We had military helicopters.

Seyidaga War-cameraman

We scrambled a helicopter and by about 2 pm we had reached Agdam.

The bodies of the dead were being brought in by the dozen.

After the Khojaly massacre, we couldn't collect all the dead.

Nobody knew how many there were and where they were.

Those who had escaped talked about hundreds of victims.

There were many corpses, especially near Askeran controlled by Armenians.

We had a deal with the Armenians to exchange bodies.

But now, there were so many dead civilians

that the Armenians couldn't deal with them,

or didn't want to.

This was the largest number of victims in the whole Karabakh war.

Our local field commander in Agdam, Allahverdi Bagirov

knew the Armenian commander in Askeran, Vitaly Balasanyan.

They had played together on the Karabakh soccer team, back in the Soviet days.

Vitaliy Balasanyan Commander of Askeran forces

I went to see Allahverdi

who was discussing with Vitaly about collecting corpses near Askeran.

Vitaly didn't want us to go there,

but then he checked it with Stepanakert and agreed.

However he had some conditions:

foreign journalists could not film him or his soldiers.

Then Allahverdi and I left together.

Was there an Armenian post there?

There was.

We sat in Armenian cars

and headed for Askeran,

passing the post between Agdam and Askeran.

We were with the Armenian military,

when we reached Askeran.

It was a horrible scene.

Many corpses had been mutilated.

Vitaly and his fighters were next to me the whole time.

Telling me film this,

but not this.

But I didn't switch off my camera.

I held it down at my side and kept recording.

Oh, God!

Do not forgive this!

My motherland!

Oh, Azeri land!

Whenever I could, I lifted up my camera and filmed all around.

I managed to record Vitaly himself at the site where it happened.

So, are you sure the territory was under Armenian control?

Of course!

Why else would Armenian commander Vitaly Balasanyan have been there?

I didn't know that on the other side of the front-line in Askeran and Khojaly,

Arturas Zuokas, a Lithuanian journalist had interviewed Armenian commanders.

What's your opinion, your first impression about yesterday's events?

Yesterday, the town

stop filming.

At the same time the new masters were settling in to devastated Khojaly.

They threw innocent people out in the street

and confiscated their homes.

As I listened to Seyidaga,

I still didn’t understand

why they let an Azerbaijani cameramen film the crime scene.

I think they wanted the Azerbaijani people to be in shock,

to be afraid.

Year's later, British journalist Thomas de Waal came to the same conclusion.

He quotes the current president of Armenia, Serzh Sarkisyan,

who was then a military commander,

on the reasons for the Khojaly massacre.

“I think the main point is something different.

Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us,

they thought that the Armenians were people

who could not raise their hand against the civilian population.

We were able to break that stereotype

And that's what happened”

I want to repeat again,

and not in order to justify myself:

we had no intention of fighting civilians,

especially not corpses.

Where is the logic?

What is there to talk about?

The mere fact that there is a strict taboo on the topic of Khojaly in Armenia

makes me think that it was a crime against humanity.

The people, who committed those crimes in Khojaly

will stand before a court.

I am sure that it will happen in our lifetime.

I hope that the Armenians will overcome their fears.

Endless corridor

The woman our soldiers are carrying

is my wife

Saadat

Gunay was born in sieged Khojaly on 23rd of February, 1992

...died on 17.03.2011 in the refugee camp for Khojaly survivors

613 men, women and children were massacred in Khojaly, February 25-26, 1992 and more than 150 are still missing

No one has ever stood trial for this massacre and human rights violation

Despite four resolutions by the United Nations calling for an immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal, Armenia continues to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories to this day