Zori Balayan - Allegation

Allegation

Azerbaijani's cite a paragraph from a book, "Revival of Our Souls" while other websites say "Revival of Our Spirits", supposedly written by Zori Balayan where he admits to killing a Turkish child. Azerbaijani's go as far as to cite the pages, which the quote is on, the publisher company and publication city. The paragraph states:

"When I and Khachatur entered the house, our soldiers had nailed a 13-year-old Turkish child to the window.He was making much noise so Khachatur put mother's cut breast into his mouth. I skinned his chest and belly. Seven minutes later the child died. As I used to be a doctor I was humanist and didn't consider myself happy for what I had done to a 13-year-old Turkish child. But my soul was proud for taking 1 percent of vengeance of my nation. Then Khachatur cut the body into pieces and threw it to a dog of same origin with Turks. I did the same to three Turkish children in the evening. I did my duty as an Armenian patriot. Khachatur had sweated much. But I saw struggle of revenge and great humanism in his and other soldiers' eyes. The next day we went to the church to clear our souls from what done previous day. But we were able to clear Khojali from slops of 30 thousand people."

Zori Balayan has come out denying having ever written such a book saying:

"Many people call me these days asking whether I have a book published in Vanadzor and titled ‘The Revival of Our Spirit’. The question is that for already two years people come across this dirty disinformation, this perfect nonsense, to put it mildly, which is said to be a sentence from my non-existing book. I want to say that authors of these false quotes do not understand that first of all they discredit their own people. I demand that those entitled to protect writers’ rights by investigating such cases to show the readers the book that was quoted. I am sure that the human rights are not a hollow sound but a necessary reality of our life and it has to be protected."

The Armenian Foreign Ministry stated:

“In addition, the film repeatedly quotes quasi-book that no one has ever seen by Zori Balayan. And no one can see this book as it never existed. Zori Balayan has denied this fake for many times.”

Ayse Gunaysu, member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (Istanbul branch):

“Even if one didn’t know that there was no such book by Zori Balayan, it should be quite obvious, from the language used in depicting the torture, that the quotation was wholly made up. What was shocking is that the quotation was repeated not by a Turkish ultra-nationalist, an Armenian hater, but from a person who sincerely denounces racism and discrimination.”

Onur Caymaz, a progressive, democratic-minded Turkish writer:

A couple of days after the publication of his article in the Turkish “Radikal” newspaper where Caymaz was quoting the alleged “quote” by Zori Balayan, Caymaz wrote in his personal blog that he was wrong, that it was evident that Zori Balayan had not written such a book, and that the quotation was false. He said he had heard about the book from an Azeri physician in a panel discussion on TV.