Azerbaijan pays tribute to victims of 1918 genocide of Azerbaijanis

Today, March 31, the Azerbaijani people honour the memory of the victims of the genocide of Azerbaijanis in 1918.

On March 31, 1918, a massacre of Azerbaijanis began in Baku. It was attended by 6,000 soldiers of the Baksovet and a 4,000-armed detachment of the Dashnaktsutyun party. For three days, armed Armenian formations, with the assistance of the Bolsheviks, destroyed the houses of Azerbaijanis, killing everyone, young and old, Caliber.Az reports.

Armenian Dashnaks and Bolsheviks committed unprecedented atrocities against the Azerbaijani population in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Garabagh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Lankaran, Ganja and other regions. They killed more than 70,000 people, including women, children, old people, burned villages, expelled inhabitants from their homes with special cruelty.

As a result of these atrocities, 229 villages in Baku province, 272 in Ganja province, 115 in Zangezur province and 157 in Karabakh province were wiped off the face of the earth.

After establishing the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, on July 15, 1918, the Council of Ministers adopted a resolution to create an Extraordinary Investigation Commission to investigate this tragedy. At the first stage, the Commission investigated the March genocide - atrocities in Shamakhi, grave crimes committed by Armenians on the territory of Iravan province. A special structure was created under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to bring these realities to the world community. March 31 was declared a day of national mourning by the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. Thus, for the first time in history, an attempt was made to make a political assessment of the genocide against Azerbaijanis and occupation of our lands, which lasted for more than a century. However, after the seizure of ADR by Soviet Russia, the works in this direction remained unfinished.

Already after Azerbaijan gained state independence on the initiative of national leader Heydar Aliyev, the study and informing the world community about the realities of the genocide of our people committed by Armenians on March 31 began. By the historically significant decree of Heydar Aliyev "On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis" issued on March 26, 1998, March 31 was declared "The Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis". After that, important works were done to study this date, numerous works were written and translated into foreign languages. Many new facts and documents have been collected thanks to the research carried out in recent years. The mass grave site found in Guba is the result of one of the bloody episodes of this tragedy.