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Remembering March 31 genocide in details

31 March 2014 08:00 (UTC+04:00)
Remembering March 31 genocide in details

By Sara Rajabova

The atrocities, unprecedented crimes, harassment, and genocide committed by the Armenian nationalists against Azerbaijani people have a long history.

The Armenian vandalism and violence against the Azerbaijanis is not limited to the ones committed at the end of the 20th century.

The Armenians massacred the Azerbaijanis and Turks in the 20th century in a bid to invade the Azerbaijani and Turkish lands, establish a state, and realize the "Greater Armenia" dream.

One of these crimes was the March 31 genocide committed by the Armenian vandals and Bolsheviks throughout Azerbaijan in 1918.

The date reflects the memory of bloody and tragic events in Azerbaijan's history.

Starting on the night of March 30, 1918, members of the Armenian Dashnak party in concert with Soviet Bolsheviks massacred about 20,000 innocent Azerbaijani people, including the elderly, women, and children.

Hundreds of Azerbaijanis were executed by Armenians in Baku, Shamakhy, Guba, and Mughan in March-April 1918, and tens of thousands of people were expelled from their lands.

Armenian Bolshevik troops led by StepanShaumyan massacred thousands of people, burnt Islamic shrines, and confiscated the 400-million-manat estate of Baku residents. Tezepir Mosque was bombed, and a magnificent architectural building, Ismailiyyeh, was burnt down.

The genocide policy pursued against Azerbaijanis was not limited to Baku. Shamakhy was the second big city after Baku, where Armenian dashnaks killed 8,027 Azerbaijanis, including 2,560 women and 1,277 children.

The Special Investigation Commission set up by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on July 15, 1918, collected many documents and submitted them to the government.

Special Investigation Commission member A.F. Novatsky's report "The case of the destruction of the Shamakhy city and violence committed against the Muslim population of the city" was the basis of the commission's materials on the massacre in Shamakhy.

Novatsky said in his report that on March 31 the Armenians started to slaughter Muslim population, adding that their steps were accompanied by burning houses, killing civilians, and looting, and the best houses belonging to rich and famous Muslims were set ablaze.

Novatsky noted that the residents were shot in the streets without distinction, men, women, children, and the killings were accompanied by horrifying torments and tortures.

The corpses of tortured women exposed to vile abuse and children nailed to the ground with stakes were scattered on the streets.

Novatsky said the Muslim population of Shamakhy was tortured for several days, and only the arrival of a detachment of Turkish soldiers forced the Armenians to suspend these atrocities and crimes for a while.

He said the Armenians attacked the city once again in April, and exterminated the Muslim population more cruelly; almost all of the remaining population in the city was killed, and streets, yards, houses, and mosques were filled with corpses.

People's properties were stolen and exported to the Armenian Molokan villages. All the Muslim parts of the city were put to torch, and mosques were burned down.

Pointing to the motives for killing the Muslim population of Shamakhy, Novatsky said the Armenians killed people just because they were Muslims, out of revenge and national enmity.

In its report, Novatsky particularly drew attention to the fact that the Bolshevik-Dashnak units annihilated the leaders of the Muslim population at first.

Bolshevik P.Bocharov who witnessed the bloody drama in Shamakhy, said it was as if the city did not exist after one night, and its population was slaughtered. "Taking advantage of our inexperience, Lalayev organized a gang of bandits who terrorized the local population, attacked the settlements, and raped the women," Bocharov remembered.

Armenia's vandalism against innocent Azerbaijani people did not end with the bloody massacre in Shamakhy. They also seized and destroyed other districts of the country.

The Armenian dashnaks burnt thousands of villages in Lenkeran, Mughan and Nagorno-Karabakh, killing thousands of people.

About 150 villages in the mountainous part of Karabakh, 115 in Zangazur, 211 in the Iravan province, and 92 in the Kars region were razed to the ground and people were executed with brutality.

Also, 16,000 Azerbaijanis were murdered in 122 villages of Guba in northern Azerbaijan.

Along with these Azerbaijanis who were killed with extreme cruelty, thousands of Lezgis, Jews, and people of other nationalities living in Guba at the time were also exposed to violence.

The evidence of the Armenian vandalism in Guba is the burial of the remains of the genocide victims. The burial was discovered during the construction of a stadium in Guba in 2007.

It was proven that people whose remains were found in a mass grave were killed by the Armenians in 1918.

A genocide memorial complex was built near the mass grave; Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev opened the memorial in September 2013.

The mass grave contained the remains of hundreds of victims, including over 50 children and 100 women.

Although head of the Baku Soviet Shaumyan tried to cover up the atrocities of the massacre in Azerbaijan, his government was unable to hide the traces of the bloody crime.

A document proving the historical crimes of the Armenians against the Azerbaijani people was recently found in the archives of the French Foreign Ministry.

The document was sent to the Ministry by Damien de Martel, the then French High Commissioner for Caucasus, based in Tbilisi.

Martel described the massacre of 4,000 Azerbaijanis, including women and children, in June 1920 in the vicinity of Yerevan.

His report was sent to the French Foreign Ministry on July 20, 1920.

"...As for these military operations, I obtained some information on the execution of the operations from witnesses who recently came back from Armenia. In the south of Erivan, the Armenian troops encircled 25 Tatar [Azerbaijani] villages inhabited by more than 40,000 Muslims [Azerbaijanis] at the end of last June. This population, too close to the capital city to have any designs of independence, had always been quiet and peaceful; they were expelled with cannon shots to the Aras River, and were forced to leave their villages which were immediately occupied by Armenian refugees. During this incident, about 4,000 persons, including women and children, were killed, drowned by Armenian soldiers in the Aras River," the report said.

This document shows that the Armenians requiring help from France urged the French government to protect them from the Bolsheviks and even seize the "historical Armenian lands" in Turkey. At the same time, the commissioner acknowledges the genocide committed against Azerbaijanis.

This document is a clear evidence of Armenia's vandalism, ruthlessness, and lies. The Armenians always claimed that Turks and Muslims committed genocide against them and occupied their territories. However, this document shows that it was the Armenians who always coveted others' lands and committed cruel massacres against the representatives of other nations.

In 1919, during the governance of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic which was established in 1918, Azerbaijan's parliament made a decision to mark March 31 as the day of Azerbaijanis' genocide.

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

Former Azerbaijani President and national leader Heydar Aliyev issued a decree on March 26, 1998 to commemorate March 31 as the Day of Azerbaijanis' Genocide.

The tragedies which took place in Azerbaijan in the 19thand 20th centuries and resulted in the occupation of Azerbaijan's lands formed the consecutive stages of Armenia's purposeful hostile policy against the Azerbaijani people.

Despite the vandalism committed by Armenian invaders against the Azerbaijani people, these acts haven't received due condemnation by the world community to date.

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