Country mourns 102nd anniversary of March Genocide of Azerbaijanis

By Azernews

By Akbar Mammadov

Today the country mourns the 102nd anniversary of March 31-Genocide of Azerbaijanis, which was committed by Armenians from March 30 to April 3, 1918 in several various villages, cities and regions of Azerbaijan.

Among the deadliest of the massacres against the Azerbaijanis are those committed by the Armenian armed forces in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Goychay, Kurdamir, Salyan, Lankaran and other regions in March, 1918.

According to official sources, during those tragic events from March 30 to April 3, 1918, tens of thousands of peaceful civilians were killed on ethnic and religious grounds in a horrific act of genocide by Soviet troops and Armenian Dashnak armed units in the city of Baku and a number of regions in Baku governorate, as well as Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Salyan, Zangazur and other areas. Residential settlements were destroyed, historical monuments, mosques and cemeteries were razed to the ground.

The advent of March 31 Genocide

The first massacres in the 20th century were committed by the Armenians in 1905-1907 when thousands of innocent civilians were slaughtered in Baku, Nakhchivan, Zangazur, Iravan and other historical Azerbaijani lands.

From December, 1917 to March, 1918, the Armenian armed forces, led by Andranik, destroyed a total of 197 villages, including 32 villages in Iravan governorate, 84 villages in Echmiadzin governorate, and 7 villages in Nor-Bayazid governorate, slaughtering and expelling local residents, looting their property and razing their homes to the ground.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Armenians attempted to carry out their despicable intentions under protection of the Bolsheviks. In March of 1918, Stepan Shaumyan was appointed as the commissar extraordinary of the Caucasus and dispatched to Baku.

This marked the beginning of a treacherous plan to wipe out the Azerbaijanis living in the city of Baku. Presented under the guise of the “fight against anti-revolutionary elements”, this plan was carried out by Baku Commune led by Dashnak-Bolshevik Shaumyan.

On March 31, 1918, the massacre of peaceful Azerbaijanis began in the city of Baku. Committed by the 6,000-strong Baku Soviet troops and 4,000-strong armed units of Dashnaktsutyun party, the barbaric act lasted for three days, during which Azerbaijani settlements were suddenly attacked and all residents from children to adults were massacred.

Proofs, investigations and truth

Kulner, a German witness of those tragic events, wrote in his memoirs on Baku in 1925: “Armenians attacked Muslim (Azerbaijani) settlements, killing everybody, cutting them up with swords and bayoneting. Several days after the genocide corpses of 87 Azerbaijanis were pulled out from a groove. Their ears and noses were cut off, their abdominals were ripped up and genitals chopped. Armenians showed no mercy to children and elderly people.”

The March 1918 events received considerable attention following the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) when in order to investigate violence against the Azerbaijani population, the ADR Council of Ministers set up an Extraordinary Investigation Commission on July 15, 1918. According to material of the Extraordinary Investigation Commission, Armenian gangs annihilated nearly 8,000 civilians in Shamakhi. Some 28 villages in Javanshir governorate and 17 villages in Jabrayil governorate were completely destroyed and their population wiped out.

The gangs ambushed and shot down a 3,000-strong caravan of Azerbaijani civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, to the last person near Gyumru. In Nakhchivan governorate, several villages were burned down, in Zangazur uyezd, 115 Azerbaijani villages were destroyed, 3,257 men, 2,276 women and 2,196 children were killed.

In Zangazur uyezd, 10,068 Azerbaijanis were murdered or made disabled, while 50,000 people became refugees. In Iravan governorate, 135,000 Azerbaijanis in 199 villages were killed and the villages were razed to the ground. In 1918-1920, the Armenian armed units destroyed 150 villages in the mountainous part of Karabakh, annihilating local population.

March 31 is a nationwide mourning day

In 1919 and 1920, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic commemorated March 31 as the nationwide mourning day. In fact, that was a first attempt to politically recognize genocide against the Azerbaijanis and more than a century-long occupation of Azerbaijani lands.

It was national leader Heydar Aliyev who initiated a comprehensive investigation into the March 31 genocide and launched a campaign to raise the world community`s awareness of the tragedy. On March 26, 1998, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev signed a historically-important Decree “On the genocide of Azerbaijanis” to proclaim March 31 as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis. This gave a strong push to efforts to study the history of genocide, and a large number of works have been written and translated into foreign languages. Numerous new evidence and documents have recently been discovered to prove the genocide. One of the bloodiest episodes of this genocide took place in Guba uyezd when 167 villages were completely destroyed in April-May, 1918. Guba genocide mass grave was discovered during excavation works on April 1, 2007. In 2009, the Cabinet of Ministers issued an Order to approve the “Plan of measures to immortalize victims of massacre in Guba district”, which included the erection of a memorial in the site of the mass grave. The Guba Genocide Memorial Complex was unveiled on September 18, 2013. It was later discovered that apart from Azerbaijanis, representatives of other ethnicities living in Guba were massacred and buried in the mass grave, including Lezgis, Jews, and Tats.

On January 18, 2018, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan signed a Decree “On the 100th anniversary of the 1918 genocide of Azerbaijanis”.

Annexation of Zangazur and other regions of Azerbaijan

In 1920, Armenians took advantage of the coming of the Soviet power into the South Caucasus, and declared the annexation of Zangezur and other regions of Azerbaijan to the Armenian Soviet Republic. They later started to utilize newer means to strengthen their policy, aimed at the deportation of Azerbaijani people from these territories. For this purpose, they got use of the 23 December 1947 decree of the Soviet Council of Ministers "On removal of collective farmers and other Azerbaijani population from the Armenian Soviet Republic to the Kura-Araz lowlands of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic". During 1948-1953, they finally achieved the purpose of mass deportation of Azeri people from their historical land, at the state level.