103 years pass since Genocide of Azerbaijanis

Today, March 31 is the Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

Report informs that 103 years have passed since those bloody events.

On March 30 and April 3, 1918, the Baku Soviet and the armed formations of the Armenian Dashnaks committed genocide against the Azerbaijani people in Baku, in various parts of the Baku province, as well as in Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Hajigabul, Salyan, Zangazur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan and other territories of the country. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, tens of thousands of people were missing.

As a result of the genocides perpetrated against the Azerbaijani people, the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions were seized starting from 1988. Thus, 20% of the country's territory was occupied, hundreds of thousands of our compatriots became refugees and internally displaced persons.

The bloodiest of these events occurred on March 31, 1918. Taking advantage of the February and October 1917 coups in Russia, the Armenians managed to implement their smeary plans under the Bolshevik flag. From March 1918, the Baku commune, under the guise of a struggle against counter-revolutionary elements, began to implement their nefarious plans to clear the Baku province of Azerbaijanis.

During the March massacres, the Armenians shelled and destroyed many ancient buildings, historical monuments, and sanctuaries.

As a result of the shots launched by the flotilla stationed in the Caspian Sea, the minarets of the Juma and Tezepir mosques were severely damaged. Armed units of the Dashnaks set fire to the bodies of people who were brutally killed in the caravansarai.

After the Sovietization of the South Caucasus in 1920, the Armenians declared Zangazur and several other Azerbaijani lands the territory of the Armenian SSR. At the next stage, the policy of deporting Azerbaijanis from these territories expanded even further. For this purpose, based on a special decree of the USSR Soviet of Ministers dated December 23, 1947, "On the resettlement of collective farmers and other Azerbaijani population from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Araks lowland of the Azerbaijan SSR," in 1948-1953, Armenians achieved the mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from their historical territories at the state level.

The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic twice marked March 31, 1919, and 1920 as a national mourning day. After Azerbaijan gained independence, it became possible to create an objective picture of our people's historical past. The decree "On the genocide of Azerbaijanis" signed on March 26, 1998, by national leader Heydar Aliyev gave a political assessment of these events and for the first time officially announced the genocide of Azerbaijanis committed by Armenians.

On March 26, 1998, President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev signed a decree "On the genocide of Azerbaijanis." Since then, March 31 - the Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis - is marked annually in our country at the state level.