Azernews.Az

The America-Azerbaijan Council has condemned the distortion of facts by a U.S.-based Armenian English-language newspaper about the January 20, 1990 developments in which hundreds of people were killed or injured on the streets of Baku.
An article, titled "Remembering black January and the massacre of Baku Armenians," was posted on the Asbarez newspaper’s website on January 19. Moreover, a photo claiming "Armenians were slain in their homes during the week of massacres" was supplemented to the story.
A scrutiny has revealed that one of the photographed victims of the killings committed by the Soviet troops in the Azerbaijani capital was Vera Bassatina, an 18-year-old ethnic Jewish Azerbaijani. It was also established that the photo was taken by Andrey Solovyev, an employee of Russia’s state news agency ITAR-TASS, who died during the Abkhazia war in Georgia in 1993. Solovyev had provided the original photo to Azerbaijan’s state-run AzerTAj news agency.
The council said in a statement that it denounces using media outlets for libel purposes and the propaganda of nationalism.
"We call on the Asbarez editorial office to rectify their mistake and formally apologize for having insulted the memories of the January 20 victims," the statement said.
In the backdrop of Armenia’s territorial claims, the USSR leadership, which was trying to maintain the Communist regime in Azerbaijan and strangle the unfolding national freedom movement, pulled troops into Baku early on January 20, 1990, without announcing a state of emergency. 132 people were killed, including women, children and the elderly, and 612 others were injured. 117 of those killed were Azerbaijanis and the rest were people of other nationalities, according to official sources.*