Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 31
Trend:
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made a statement on March 31 - Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, Trend reports referring to the ministry.
According to the statement, this day every year Azerbaijan commemorates the victims of the bloody massacre perpetrated by Armenians against Azerbaijanis.
“One hundred three years ago, in March-April 1918, the Armenian Dashnak-Bolshevik armed groups operating under the mandate of the Baku Council (Baku Soviet) committed the massacres in the city of Baku and other towns and districts of the former Baku Province, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed for their ethnic and religious affiliation,” reads the statement. “We honor the memory of the victims of these events and consider it important to preserve memory about them in order to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Stepan Shaumian, an ethnic Armenian, that time's Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, admitted that 6,000 armed soldiers of the Baku Soviet and 4,000 from the Dashnaksutyun party took part in the massacres against the Azerbaijani people.”
“The genocide carried out against the Azerbaijanis along with Baku covered also Shamakhy, Guba, Iravan, Zangezur, Garabagh and Nakhchivan regions. During the first five months of 1918, more than 6,000 people were murdered with utmost cruelty in Guba alone; a total of 167 villages were destroyed. Mass graves discovered in Guba district in 2007 testify the inhumane acts committed by Armenians,” said the statement.
The ministry stressed that the March massacres of 1918 against Azerbaijanis were prepared in advance and ruthlessly implemented by radical nationalist Armenians.
As the ministry reminded, the Government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic established the Extraordinary Investigation Commission in 1918 in order to investigate the heavy crimes perpetrated by Armenians and has taken measures to deliver true information about those events to the world community.
“The commission which was comprised of the best lawyers of that time representing different nationalities – Russians, Jewish, Polish, Georgians and even Armenians, based on the pieces of evidence launched criminal cases against 194 individuals accused of different crimes against the peaceful population; 24 individuals in Baku and about 100 individuals in Shamakhy had been arrested for perpetrated crimes,” noted the ministry. “However, this process, as well as a full investigation of the tragic events and its political-legal assessment had been suspended after the demise of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.”
The ministry also emphasized that only after 80 years – on March 26, 1998, an adequate political assessment was given to those events. Heydar Aliyev who was then president of Azerbaijan signed the decree ‘On Genocide of Azerbaijanis’, and 31 March was declared the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.
“The commemoration of the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis plays important role in raising the awareness of the world community to the facts of the massacre and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in the past and present,” stated the ministry. “Despite that more than hundred years passed since those events, Armenia, which for almost 30 years kept the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan under occupation, continued the policy of committing crimes against Azerbaijanis on ethnic grounds by carrying out ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis in Armenia and the occupied lands of Azerbaijan and committing numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide, including Khojaly Genocide of February 1992.”
“During the military operations launched on September 27, 2020, by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in response to another military provocation against our country, the Armenian Armed Forces deliberately had been making missile strikes on civilians in Ganja, Barda, Tartar and other Azerbaijani cities. Thus, Armenia again reminded of the March massacre of a century ago,” the ministry further noted. “While remembering the victims of the March massacre, Azerbaijan strongly condemns the deliberate policy of genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing by Armenia against the people of Azerbaijan and stresses the importance of ceasing impunity of Armenia to prevent the occurrence of such crimes in the future.”
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry also called on Armenia to comply with international obligations.
"Azerbaijan, in turn, will take all the necessary legal measures to ensure peace and end impunity," concluded the appeal.