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THREAD - I recently retweeted a video showing an elder #Armenia-n civilian beheaded by #Azerbaijan-i soldiers during the last #Karabagh war. There are numerous such videos circulating
A liberal twitto reacted that these videos "don't serve to be shared [..]. Of course they should be part of the criminal investigation, but other than that it just shows Azerbaijanis as "barbarians" , when I think those who commit these acts do not speak for the whole country"
This thread is to comment this kind of censoring reaction. Hushing or silencing such denounciation comes precisely in line with the aim of the #Azerbaijan authorities
What is astonishing is that this kind of request for "decency" is put forward by some scholars only when it come to Armenians. Their true concern is to avoid depicting Azerbaijanis as barbarians.
This behaviour is completely different for instance that the one they display facing #nazi crimes or #ISIS crimes. In these latter cases, they advocate for the never-ending diffusion of such gruesome pictures for educational purpose .
Such pictures have actually been publicized because it was required to show that nazis or ISIS were actually barbarians and that their behaviour must be condemned
Similarly, the recent beheading of the French professor Samuel Paty has been rightfully and worldwide publicized for the very same reason: showing the threat that is radical Islam on our fundamental freedoms
Sometimes, gruesome pictures are also widely broadcast for controversial motives: the young Syrian boy Alan Kurdi who drowned in 2015 was incredibly broadcast to blame Europeans (and not smugglers) in order to make them accepting massive clandestine immigration.
Or the murder of George Floyd was also worldwide disclosed no only in order to denounce the remaining racist conceptions in the US police but to essentialize "White people" as racist everywhere in the world.
On the contrary, in the mind of these scholars, Azerbaijanis are NOT supposed to be condemned as racist. Because we are supposed to hail an idealized past of common living (I'll come back on this point).
For sure, all Azerbaijanis did not born criminal, neither did all Germans of the Nazi era or all #ISIS criminal. But they became criminal because of an ideology.
Similarly all Azerbaijanis certainly did not born criminal but the education to hatred received for 3 decades made most of them racist (including some HR defenders). This is the truth that some scholars cannot stand and they have several strategies to avoid it.
Concealing crimes in the name of "decency" is one of these strategies. "Bothsidism" is another. It consist in saying that "both sides did this, dit that", despite evidences coming only from one side. (a common argument among Holocaust deniers for instance)
A third strategy is the "pocahontasification" of the Past: the idea of a mild and soft cohabitation of natives Armenians with Tatars colonialists. What is odd is that these scholars are often the very first to denounce such orientalism when it comes to the West.
Because, yes, Azerbaijanis are colonialists in #Artsakh. Their 1st apparition in the region dates back of the mid 18th century with Panah Ali khan & their 1st settlement in #Shushi in 1920 after wiping out the Armenian natives of the city.
In the name of such orientalism, crimes against Armenians or against their heritage is minored or ignored, even before the war. The beheading of officer Margaryan (when he was sleeping) by Safarov in 2004 in Budapest didn't make a line in mainstream media
The full erasure of the Armenian medieval necropolis of Jugha in Nakhichevan was completely ignored even by UNESCO contrarily to the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan or Palmyra in Syria.
Well, let's conclude by a well-known bitter joke among Armenians: a plane crashes in a remote wild area. Two Armenian survivors are captured by a primitive tribe which put them in a pot on a fire.
"Armen, what are they doing ?" say one of the survivors. "You see Gurken, they are cannibals, they are going to eat us" replied Armen. "Certainly not" replied Gurken "Nobody has ever considered us as human beings" .....
