Azerbaijan commemorates 108th anniversary of 1918 genocide

Today, March 31, marks the Day of the Azerbaijani Genocide, carried out by Armenian Dashnaks in collaboration with the Bolsheviks.

As Caliber.Az reminds, 108 years have passed since these tragic events.

From March 30 to April 3, 1918, in Baku and various regions of the Baku Governorate, as well as in Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Hajigabul, Salyan, Zangezur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan, and other territories, the Baku Soviet and armed units of Armenian Dashnaks committed genocide against Azerbaijanis.

According to official sources, around 12,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, and tens of thousands went missing as a result of the genocide.

The Armenians, skillfully taking advantage of the February and October revolutions of 1917 in Russia, were able to pursue their claims under the Bolshevik banner.

From March 1918, the Baku Commune began implementing a treacherous plan to expel and destroy Azerbaijanis in the Baku Governorate under the pretext of fighting “counter-revolutionary elements.”

During the March massacre, Armenians destroyed numerous historical and architectural monuments, including sacred sites, and shelled the Ismailiyya Palace, considered one of the jewels of world architecture.

As a result of shelling from ships of the Caspian Sea fleet, the minarets of the Juma and Tezepir mosques suffered serious damage. Dashnak armed units brutally killed people in caravanserais and burned their bodies on the spot.

Armenians, exploiting the Sovietisation of the Transcaucasus for their own sinister purposes, in 1920 declared Zangezur and a number of other Azerbaijani lands as territory of the Armenian SSR.

In the subsequent period, they resorted to new measures to expand the policy of deporting Azerbaijanis from these territories. At the state level, they achieved the adoption of a special decree by the USSR Council of Ministers on December 23, 1947, titled “On the Resettlement of Collective Farmers and Other Azerbaijani Population from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Aras Lowland of the Azerbaijani SSR.” This led to the mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from their historical lands between 1948 and 1953.

In 1988, the policy of deportation was continued, and approximately 300,000 Azerbaijanis living in Armenia were forced to leave their homes.

On March 31, 1919, and 1920, the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic twice observed the day as a day of national mourning.

After Azerbaijan regained independence, it became possible to create an objective picture of the nation’s historical past. In the decree of the national leader Heydar Aliyev, “On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis” dated March 26, 1998, these events were politically assessed, and for the first time, the Armenian-perpetrated genocide of Azerbaijanis was officially acknowledged.

March 31, the Day of the Azerbaijani Genocide, is annually observed at the state level in Azerbaijan. It is no coincidence that, in subsequent years, this commemoration became one of the key directions of Azerbaijan’s foreign policy.

In recent years, evidence of mass killings carried out by Armenians during the 1918 events has been discovered in Guba. The countless human remains found serve as concrete proof of Armenian atrocities during these massacres. In honour of the victims, the Guba Memorial Complex of the Genocide was established.

The Genocide Memorial Museum of the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan also plays a significant role in informing the international community about the horrific events that took place in Azerbaijan.

It should be noted that the 1918 Azerbaijani genocide has still not received legal recognition at the international level.