by Azerbaijanis themselves", despite the findings by Human Rights Watch which placed direct responsibility for the civilian deaths with Karabakh Armenian forces. Pashinyan referred to Ayaz Mutalibov's interview to claim that the massacre had been committed not by Armenian soldiers but by Popular Front of Azerbaijan militants who allegedly shot their own civilians escaping through the corridor. Nevertheless, attempting to minimize his own role did not help him. In one of his interviews Mutalibov stated that the event was "organized" by his political opponents to force his resignation. The interview was much cited in Armenia. In later interviews, however, Mutalibov would condemn the Armenians, claiming that they blatantly misinterpreted his words. He also denied ever accusing the Popular Front of Azerbaijan of having anything to do with these events, saying that he only meant that the PFA took advantage of the situation to focus the popular resentment on him. Mutalibov stated that after the massacre he called the speaker of the Supreme Soviet of NKAO Artur Mkrtchyan, and the latter assured him that the people of Khojaly were given a corridor to escape, and he only referred to Mkrtchyan's words, without making any assertions as to whether the corridor actually existed. Armenian organisations such as Armenian National Committee of America, Political Science Association of Armenia and Armenian National Committee of Australia have embraced the denialism of the massacre by calling it "propaganda" and "fabricated". Politicization Commemorations of the Khojaly massacre in Turkey and Azerbaijan are used to counter the narrative of the Armenian genocide. Speeches during the commemoration ceremonies in Turkey have an intense anti-Armenian coloring. Their messages boil down to claiming that since Armenians committed the massacre, it is them who are "perpetrators", Turks are "victims", and the Armenian Genocide is a lie. In the opinion of journalist Aykan Sever, the instrumentalization of the Khojaly massacre for creating a victim image for Turks intensified following the assassination of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007 in Istanbul. British journalist Thomas de Waal thinks that the massacre's commemoration as a purported "genocide" not only depicts Azerbaijan as a “victim of aggression”, but also has become the countering and "competing" idea against the extermination of Armenians. Historian and genocide scholar Yair Auron calls the use of the term "genocide" for the events in Khojaly a "cynical Azeri fabrication" fostered by Azerbaijan. According to Auron, the use of the term "genocide"