Azerbaijan marks 35th anniversary of the January 20 tragedy A turning point in National Liberation Movement

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the events of January 20, 1990, which went down in the history of the Azerbaijani people as the Bloody January Tragedy.

As Caliber.Az recalls, the fabricated Karabakh issue, reignited at the end of 1987, aimed to undermine Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, occupy its lands, and expel hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from their ancestral homes in Armenia and then-Nagorno-Karabakh. This conflict between two republics of the former Soviet Union represented yet another stage in the systematic resettlement of Armenians onto Azerbaijani lands during the 19th and 20th centuries, along with ethnic cleansing and genocide purposefully carried out against the Azerbaijani people.

The direct or indirect support of the Armenian SSR’s territorial claims against Azerbaijan by the USSR leadership, the separatism fuelled by radical Armenian nationalists, and the mass violence against our compatriots, combined with the criminal indecision of Azerbaijan’s then-leaders and their steps contrary to national interests, compelled the Azerbaijani people to rise in defence of the republic's territorial integrity.

This led to the emergence of a popular movement spanning a wide social spectrum, which gradually evolved into a national liberation movement.

The USSR leadership, alarmed by the Azerbaijani people's angry outcry for truth and justice and their desire to break free from imperial chains, resorted to a monstrous crime that, in essence, hastened the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian regime.

On the night of January 19-20, 1990, under orders from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, military units from the Ministry of Defence, the KGB, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR were deployed to Baku and several regions of Azerbaijan. They carried out brutal crackdowns on the civilian population, resulting in hundreds of deaths, injuries, and disappearances.

Before the declaration of a state of emergency was announced to the public, military forces ruthlessly killed 82 people and fatally wounded 20 others. In the days following the state of emergency in Baku, 21 more people were killed. Additionally, in regions where no state of emergency was declared, eight individuals lost their lives—on January 25 in Neftchala and January 26 in Lankaran.

In total, the unlawful deployment of troops in Baku and other regions claimed the lives of 147 people and left 744 others injured.

Among the victims were women, children, and the elderly, as well as medical workers and law enforcement officers. The illegal deployment of troops was accompanied by mass arrests of civilians. In Baku and other regions of the republic, 841 people were unlawfully detained, 112 of whom were sent to prisons in various cities across the USSR. Military forces fired on 200 homes and 80 vehicles, including ambulances, and extensive fires destroyed a significant amount of state and personal property. Officially, 150 people in Azerbaijan are recognized as martyrs of January 20.

On January 21, the day after the bloody massacre, the great son of our nation, Heydar Aliyev, visited Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representation in Moscow and issued a statement sharply condemning the USSR government and the inept leadership of Azerbaijan. This horrific and brutal terror inflicted on the Azerbaijani people was also decisively denounced by progressive forces worldwide.

The tragedy was not promptly or thoroughly investigated, nor was it adequately addressed in Azerbaijan. It was only years later, through the initiative of national leader Heydar Aliyev, that the events were given a political and legal assessment at the state level.

In the decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan titled "On the Observance of the 4th Anniversary of the January 20 Tragedy," dated January 5, 1994, the Milli Majlis (Parliament) of the Republic of Azerbaijan was recommended to convene a special session dedicated to the events of Bloody January. In the resolution adopted by the Milli Majlis on March 29, 1994, the perpetrators of the January 20 tragedy were explicitly identified. The events were deemed an act of military aggression and a crime committed by the totalitarian communist regime to suppress Azerbaijan's national liberation movement and to crush the people's faith and will.

The freedom and independence movement of January 20, 1990, was brutally suppressed. However, the will of the people was not broken, nor was the national spirit shaken. The sons of the homeland, who sacrificed their lives during this massacre in defence of national interests and ascended to the rank of martyrs through their unparalleled selflessness, inscribed a bright new page in the heroic chronicles of our nation.

With the historic victory achieved in the 2020 Patriotic War under the leadership of the President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, and the complete restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty as a result of the anti-terrorist measures carried out by the Azerbaijani Army in Karabakh on September 19-20, 2023, the souls of the January 20 martyrs have found peace.