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Iowa House recognizes genocide of Azerbaijanis

4 April 2013 19:54 (UTC+04:00)
Iowa House recognizes genocide of Azerbaijanis

By Sara Rajabova

The House of Representatives of the U.S. state of Iowa has adopted a resolution recognizing March 31 as Azerbaijani Remembrance Day marking the 95th anniversary of the genocide of Azerbaijanis, Azerbaijan's State Committee for Work with Diaspora said on Thursday.

As a result of the annual awareness campaign carried out by the Pax Turcica organization, member of Iowa's legislative body Dave Jacoby and Senator Robert Dvorsky made a statement over the anniversary of the genocide committed against Azerbaijanis on March 31, 1918.

The statement was submitted to the Iowa representative of the Azerbaijani-American Council (AAC).

It says that from March 30 to April 3, 1918 armed groups of the Armenian Dashnak party in concert with Soviet Bolsheviks massacred about 20,000 innocent Azerbaijanis and people of other Muslim nations in Baku and other cities of Azerbaijan. The killings were part of the massacres committed by the Armenian nationalists who sought to create a great state in the Caucasus and Anatolia. During the massacres one million Azerbaijanis and over 2.5 million Turks, Kurds and other Muslims were subjected to genocide or expelled from their native lands.

Representatives of Azerbaijani and Turkish diasporas in the U.S. earlier sent an appeal to Congress in connection with the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, requesting to inform the world community in this regard.

Also, recently the US New Jersey state's Assembly issued a commemorative resolution that recognizes March 31 as Azerbaijani Remembrance Day marking the 95th anniversary of the Azerbaijani Genocide.

The New York State Senate after the adoption of Resolution 3784 in March 2012 became the first state ever to recognize the Genocide of Azerbaijanis in law. The resolution also recognized March 31 as Azerbaijani Remembrance Day.

Besides, the US state of Nevada has twice issued a proclamation - in 2009 and 2011- on observing March 31 as a Day of Remembrance, honoring the victims resulting from the fighting that began in March 1918.

During those developments, Armenian Bolshevik troops led by Stepan Shaumyan massacred thousands of people, burnt Islamic shrines and confiscated the 400-million-manat estate of Baku residents. Tezepir Mosque was bombed, and one of the magnificent architectural buildings, Ismailiyyeh, was burnt down.

The genocide policy pursued against Azerbaijanis was not limited to Baku. Armenian dashnaks killed 8,027 Azerbaijanis, including 2,560 women and 1,277 children, in 53 villages of Shamakhy, 110 km west of Baku, on March 31. Also, 16,000 Azerbaijanis were murdered in 162 villages of Guba, northern Azerbaijan. The Armenian dashnaks burnt thousands of villages in Lenkeran, Mughan and Nagorno-Karabakh as well and killed thousands of people there.

Special Investigation Commission set up by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on July 15, 1918 collected a great number of documents and submitted them to the government. In 1919, the Azerbaijani parliament made a decision on marking March 31 as the day of Azerbaijanis' genocide.

Though this date was essentially forgotten during the Soviet times, relevant investigations on the tragedy were carried out and books were published after Azerbaijan gained independence from the USSR in 1991.

President Heydar Aliyev issued a decree on March 26, 1998 to commemorate March 31 as the Day of Azerbaijanis' Genocide. Since then, every year Azerbaijanis living in countries around the world mark March 31 as the Day of Genocide.

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