The Impact of Armenian Aggression on Education in Azerbaijan - Timeline

On September 27, 2020, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan - Ilham Aliyev has authorized the Azerbaijan military to respond to Sunday’s attacks in Azerbaijan that continuously targeted civilians and triggered a counter-offensive operation of the Azerbaijan Army along the entire front to suppress the combat activity of the armed forces of Armenia and ensure the safety of the civilian population living along the borders on its internationally recognized but illegally occupied (since 1992) territories.

Timeline 

2020 

Regardless of the interventions, Azerbaijan suffered from civilian casualties, especially in education: according to the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan, since September 27, over the past four days, as a result of the continuous shelling of Azerbaijani settlements by the Armenian occupation forces, two pupils (Grade 7 and 9) have been killed and a teacher has been injured. In fact, five people from one family two of whom were pupils have been killed by the shelling from Armenia’s forces in the latest flare-up over a breakaway province. 

Armenian policy of aggression against Azerbaijan continues to destroy educational infrastructures, too. As a result of this escalation the following eleven schools in different districts bordering with occupants were targeted and partially damaged: 

2017 

Two-year-old Zahra Guliyeva was brutally killed by Armenian forces on the night of July 4 during a violation of the longstanding ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when mortars were launched in the Alkhanli village, in Azerbaijan’s southwestern Fuzuli district. Alkhanli village was shelled by 82 and 120-millimeter mortars and heavy grenade launchers at 8:40 p.m. local time on Tuesday. Zahra’s grandmother, 50-year-old Sahiba Guliyeva, was killed, while another villager, Sarvinaz Guliyeva, age 52, has been hospitalized after receiving serious shrapnel wounds during the shelling, according to a statement issued by the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan. 

2011 

On July 14 2011, as a result of the blast of an explosive device built in a toy, a 13-year-old Azerbaijani girl, Aygun Shahmaliyeva, was killed and her 32-year-old mother, Elnara Shahmaliyeva, was seriously wounded. This terrible accident took place in the Alibayli village of the Tovuz district of Azerbaijan, bordering with the Republic of Armenia. The toy stuffed with an explosive device was found by the victim in the Tovuz River, springing from the territory of Armenia and flowing through the village of Alibayli. According to the conclusions of the preliminary investigation, the booby trap toy made in Armenia was dropped to the river intentionally, and its target was children of the neighboring Azerbaijani settlements. 

 1992-1994 

Armenia carried out this medieval-style land grab in 1991-94. The invasion resulted in brutal massacres and ethnic cleansing against the Azerbaijani civilian population. More than 800,000 Azerbaijani civilians were forcibly expelled from their homes and land. Together with 250,000 Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia, the number of Azerbaijani refugees reached over 1 million. Today Azerbaijan has the largest number of refugees per capita in the world. 

In February 1992, an unprecedented genocide was committed against the Azerbaijani population in Khojaly. This bloody tragedy, which became known as the Khojaly genocide, involved the extermination or the capture of the thousands of Azerbaijanis; the town was razed to the ground. Over the night from 25 to February 26, 1992, the Armenian armed forces with the help of the infantry guards regiment No. 366 of the former USSR, implemented the seizure of Khojaly - a small town situated in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan with the total area of 0.94 sq. km. and the population of 23,757 before the conflict. 

Four U.N. Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874, 884) adopted in 1993 condemned this invasion and ethnic cleansing, reaffirmed the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, as well as demanded immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian occupying forces from all occupied regions. Unfortunately, these binding U.N. Security Council resolutions remain unfulfilled by Armenia. 

The Nagorno-Karabakh region is an internationally recognized integral part of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was admitted to the United Nations as a sovereign and independent state with the Nagorno-Karabakh region within its borders. The sovereignty, territorial integrity, and borders of Azerbaijan have been recognized by all members of the international community.