Diaspora call on international community to give political assessment of genocide of Azerbaijanis

Leaders of Azerbaijani diaspora organizations operating in foreign countries have circulated a statement requiring the international community to give a politico-legal assessment of the March 1918 events and recognize them as genocide.

The statement says that the massacre perpetrated from March 30 to April 1, 1918 by the Bolsheviks and Armenian armed gangs in Azerbaijan is a genocide committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis, Report informs citing the State Committee for Work with the Diaspora.

“Tens of thousands of peaceful, unarmed people were villainously killed, burned, tortured, which is a clear indicator of the cruelty of the Armenians. During the genocide perpetrated by the Armenian Dashnaks, more than 150 villages of Karabakh, 110 villages of Shamakhi, 167 villages of Guba, 115 villages of Zangezur district, 98 villages of Kars region were destroyed and burned, tens of thousands of civilians, including women, children and the elderly, were killed due to ethnic and religious affiliation. In the city of Irevan, which is an ancient Azerbaijani land, and in its environs, 199 villages were destroyed, 132,000 Azerbaijanis were killed. The mass grave discovered in the Guba region clearly confirms the crimes of genocide committed by Armenians in 1918,” the statement reads.

Emphasizing in the statement that the Azerbaijani state is carrying out activities aimed at the recognition of the genocide, the authors of the statement note that the Decree “On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis” dated March 26, 1998, signed by the founder of the modern Azerbaijani state, prominent political and statesman Heydar Aliyev, gave a political assessment to these events and officially stated that Azerbaijanis were subjected to genocide by Armenians. On December 30, 2009, President Ilham Aliyev issued a decree to establish the Guba Genocide Memorial Complex.

The statement notes that the cruelty of Armenians, the deportation of Azerbaijanis continued during the years of Soviet rule and that the world community has not yet given a political and legal assessment of the March 31 genocide: “We, representatives of organizations operating in Azerbaijan and around the world, support the work, carried out by the relevant structures of the Republic of Azerbaijan in this direction, we demand from the world community to give a political and legal assessment of the tragedy of March 31 and recognize it as genocide.”