31 march -day of genocide of Azerbaijans

Azerbaijan Republic

Education Ministry

Mingachevir State University

Independent work

Faculty:Economics and managament

Group:121

Student: Şabnam Salehova

Cours:1

Topic: 31 march -Day of genocide of Azerbaijans

2022

31 march -Day of genocide of Azerbaijans

After the Republic of Azerbaijan regained its independence, it has become possible to renew the objective picture of the past history of our nation. The truth which for many years was kept back is getting disclosed and misinterpreted events are getting their real value.

Numerous acts of genocide against Azerbaijanis, which for many years did not receive their deserved political and legal assessment, is one of the secret pages of our history.

The Gulustan and Turkmenchay agreements signed in 1813 and 1828 provided the legal ground for the partition of the nation of Azerbaijan and the division of its historical lands. The occupation of the lands continued the national tragedy of the Azerbaijan people. Within a short time, the gross settlement of Armenians in the territories of Azerbaijan has begun. The occupation of Azerbaijani territories became an integral part of the genocide.

Armenians moved to Yerevan, Nakhchivan and Karabakh khanates have achieved to establish their administrative-territorial unit of the Armenian region despite their minority as compared to Azerbaijanis residing in the same area. This artificial division provided political reasons for the removal and annihilation of Azerbaijanis in their native lands. This was followed by the propaganda of the establishment of Great Armenia. In order to ensure the exculpation of the idea to establish this fictitious state in the territory of Azerbaijan, a wide-scale programme, aimed at the falsification of the national history of Armenians, was started. The distortion of the history of Azerbaijan and the whole Caucasus formed an integral part of this programme.

Inspired by the idea of the establishment of Great Armenia, Armenian invaders started to openly implement on a wide scale their evil actions against the nation of Azerbaijan during 1905-1907. Armenians started their brutal acts in Baku and further spread them through the rest of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani villages in the current territory of Armenia. Hundreds of settlements were razed to the ground and thousands of people were savagely killed. The organizers of these events were creating an unfavourable image about the people of Azerbaijan to hide the truth and prevent these events from a correct political and legal evaluation.

They got used to World War I, Russian revolutions in February and October of 1917, and managed to accomplish their ideas under the plea of Bolshevism. The implementation of a cruel plan of cleansing the population of Azerbaijan in the provinces started by the Baku commune under the plea of fighting against counter-revolutionary elements in March of 1918. Armenian crimes have secured themselves an everlasting place in the memory of the Azeri people. Thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were murdered for the only reason of their belonging to the nation of Azerbaijan. Armenians destroyed dwelling houses and burnt people alive. Most of Baku was turned into ruins with national architectural sights, schools, hospitals, mosques and other monuments destroyed.

Azeri genocide was particularly cruel in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Lankaran and other regions. Many civilians in those areas were killed, the villages were brought to ashes and national monuments were razed to the ground.

After the establishment of the Azerbaijan National Republic, closest attention was paid to the March 1918 events. The Council of Ministers issued a decree on July 15^th 1918, to establish an extraordinary committee for the investigation of those tragic events. The committee investigated the first stage of the March genocide; the brutal acts in Shamakhi and the cruel crimes in the territory of Yerevan province. A special department was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to notify the community about the truth. The Azerbaijan National Republic declared March 31^st as a mourning day two times — in 1919 and 1920. It was the first attempt in history to give a political assessment to genocide against the people of Azerbaijan and to the aggressive process which continued for over a century. But the collapse of the Azerbaijan National Republic did not allow to finish this process.

In 1920, Armenians got used to 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 Azeri people from these territories. For this purpose, they got used 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.

At the beginning of the 50^th Armenians, nationalists with the help of their defenders began to conduct a cruel aggressive campaign against the nation of Azerbaijan. In regularly published books, magazines and newspapers in the territory of the former Soviet Union there were made attempts to prove the belonging of our national culture, classic heritage and architectural monuments to Armenians. At the same time, they strengthened their efforts to create a negative image of Azeri people worldwide. In order to create the image of "a long-suffering oppressed Armenia nation," they deliberately distorted the events which took part in this region at the beginning of the century. They called themselves the victims of the genocide, which they in reality conducted against Azeri people.

Persecution of our compatriots in the territory of Yerevan, where the main population were Azerbaijanians and from the other parts of Armenia SSR led to their mass proscription. Armenians roughly violated the rights of Azeri people, created obstacles to get an education in the native language and exerted strong pressure upon them. The historical names of Azerbaijani villages were changed within a previously unforeseen process in the history of toponymy when ancient names were replaced with modern ones.

The trumped-up Armenian history was raised at the state political level in order to bring up younger generations of Armenians in the spirit of chauvinism. Brought up in the manner of Azeri literature and culture, which served to great humanist ideals, the young generation of Azerbaijanis stayed helpless before Armenia's extremist ideology.

The claims against the Azeri national spirit, honour and dignity, created an ideological platform for political and military aggression. The Azeri genocide, which was not given a correct political and legal evaluation, led to the distortion of historical facts in the Soviet media and the misleading of the communities by Armenians. The leadership of Azerbaijan did not pay sufficient attention to anti-Azeri propaganda, which raised and intensified among the soviet regime in the mid-80s.

The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Azeris from their historical lands at the first stage of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict in 1988, also did not receive a correct political assessment in Azerbaijan. The autonomous republic of Nagorny Karabakh was taken from Azerbaijan's control and annexed to the Armenian SSR on the basis of an unconstitutional decree of the Armenian Republic and under the assistance of the Moscow-led Special Administration Committee. This fact caused serious dissatisfaction among the nation of Azerbaijan and forced it to begin important political activities. Even though the aggressive policy aimed at the occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan, was strongly criticized at numerous rallies held in Azerbaijan, the political leadership still did not give up its passive and contemplative position. In January of 1990, Soviet troops were brought to Baku in order to prevent further development of the national liberation movement. Hundreds of Azeri people were killed and injured, as a result.

In February of 1992, Armenians accomplished unforeseen brutalities among the population of Khojaly. The Khojaly genocide saw thousands of Azeri people murdered and taken prisoners of war. The whole city was razed to the ground.

The adventurous policy of Armenian nationalists and separatists in Nagorny Karabakh forced from their homelands over one million Azeri nationals, who now have to live in tent camps.

The tragedies which took place in Azerbaijan in the XIX-XX centuries and resulted in the occupation of Azeri lands formed the consecutive stages of Armenia's purposeful policy against the Azeri people. Efforts were made to give a political assessment to only one of those events — the March 1918 massacre. The successor of the Azerbaijan National Republic — the Republic of Azerbaijan — considers it a historical duty to ensure a logical continuation to unfulfilled political decrees and political evaluation of the genocide.

A special authority was established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to increase the world community`s awareness of the truth about these tragedies. In 1919 and 1920, Azerbaijan Democratic Republic commemorated 31 March as a national day of mourning. In fact, it was the first attempt to give political recognition to the genocide perpetrated against Azerbaijanis and to the occupation of our lands, which lasted for more than one century. However, this process was halted after the collapse of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the investigation and recognition attempts failed. Only 80 years later, on March 26, 1998, when President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev signed the Decree “On the genocide of Azerbaijanis” did those horrific events receive proper political recognition. March 31 was declared the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis. The Decree said: “All tragedies, which occurred in the 19th-20th centuries in Azerbaijan and were accompanied by the invasion of lands, constituted stages of the systematic genocide carried out by Armenians against Azerbaijanis. Attempts were made to give political recognition to only one of these tragedies – the March 1918 massacre. As a political successor of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the Republic of Azerbaijan recognizes its historical duty to get political recognition of the events of genocide, which the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic failed to complete during its tenure.”
On the occasion of March 31-the Day of genocide of Azerbaijanis, national leader Heydar Aliyev said: “With the facts and evidence we have, we must continue to work with the world community and influential international organizations to bring awareness to the truth and to receive proper legal and political recognition of the genocide committed against our people and to change the distorted perception that prevails as a result of false information provided by the Armenian propaganda machine. It is the current generation`s sacred duty to the victims of the genocide.”
Numerous new facts and documents have been collected in the past years thanks to researches in this direction. The mass grave unearthed in Guba region reveals one of the bloody pages of this tragedy. In April-May 1918, in Guba region alone 167 villages were razed to the ground. The grave was discovered on April 1, 2007, during landscaping works on the site. In 2009, under the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers, “Plan of action to perpetuate the memory of mass murder victims in Guba region” was approved and a decision was made to construct a memorial complex and carry out renovation works in the site where mass graves were discovered. In 2007, employees of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences launched a large-scale research in the mass grave, which was completed in September 2008. The research revealed the mass grave as evidence of the genocide committed by Armenians against the local citizens in 1918. More than 400 corpses of people of different ages were found, including 50 children, 100 women, and the elderly. The research also found that among those brutally killed and buried in the grave were members of the Lezgi, Jewish, Tat, and other ethnic groups also living in Guba at the time.
The official opening ceremony of the Guba Genocide Memorial Complex which was erected at the site was held on September 18, 2013. Addressing the ceremony, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said: “History was falsified during Soviet times, so clearly this occurrence was also concealed from us. For many years, criminals like Shaumyan and others, who shed the blood of the Azerbaijani people were portrayed as heroes. I think this is a great tragedy. For many years, those who committed atrocities against our people were presented in Soviet history as heroes and were remembered by statues erected in many cities of the USSR. Only after independence did we restore justice. We cleared our beautiful city, our Baku from these statues, and in their place today there are beautiful parks, including the Sahil Park. In other words, history and justice prevailed. Today we reflect on our history. We know and should know all aspects of our history. The younger generation also needs to know what disasters our nation was faced with in the past.”
On January 18, 2018, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev signed an Order on commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the 1918 genocide of the Azerbaijanis. The Order read: “The historical evidence revealed that the geography of bloody acts committed by March-April of 1918 and in later years was much more widespread and the victims of this tragedy were far more numbered than previously estimated.”
The people and the government of Azerbaijan continue to pay tribute to the victims of the genocide and urge the world community to learn from these historical events and to expose the true nature of Armenian fascism.

References

https://mod.gov.az/en/march-31-day-of-genocide-of-azerbaijanis-413/

https://azerbaijan.az/en/related-information/5