Details added (first version posted on 14:25)

BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 31

Trend:

The Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh has disseminated an appeal in connection with the Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis, Trend reports referring to the community on March 31.

"The ethnic cleansing, genocide and predatory policy, purposefully carried out by Armenian nationalists against the Azerbaijani people for the past 200 years, are the difficult stages of Azerbaijani history full of tragedies and bloody events,” the appeal said.

“The main goal of this chauvinist policy was the expulsion of Azerbaijanis from their historical lands and the creation of "great Armenia" fabricated by the Armenians on Azerbaijani territories,” the appeal said.

“At the beginning of the 20th century, Armenian nationalists expanded their activity to implement the idea of ​​“great Armenia”, put forward in the program of the 'Dashnaktsutyun' party, having begun ethnic cleansing and the policy of genocide, systematically expelling Azerbaijanis living in their historical lands,” the appeal said.

So, Armenians committed massacres against Azerbaijani civilians in Baku, Ganja, Karabakh, Irevan, Nakhchivan, Ordubad, Sharur-Daralyaz, Zangezur, Gazakh and other areas in 1905-1906, people were brutally killed, the cities and villages were burned and destroyed.

After the February and October events which occurred in Russia in 1917, the Dashnaktsutyun party and the Armenian National Congress began to expand their activity.

In December 1917, Stepan Shaumyan, appointed temporary emergency commissioner for the Caucasus affairs, became the organizer and leader of the mass extermination of Azerbaijanis.

At the beginning of 1918, i.e., on the eve of the March bloodshed, there were about 20,000 Armenian armed people directly obeying to Shaumyan. The Bolshevik-Armenian formations opened volley fire on Baku from ships on March 30, 1918.

Afterwards, while attacking the houses of Azerbaijanis, the armed Dashnaks were brutally killing them. On March 31 and in the first days of April, thousands of peaceful Azerbaijanis were exterminated only because of their nationality.

During those days, Bolshevik-Armenian formations killed 12,000 Azerbaijani civilians in Baku. During these bloody events, people were burned alive in their houses, as well as brutally killed and tortured.