Azernews.Az

The New York Senate has adopted a resolution commemorating Azerbaijan’s Black January tragedy.

"The brutality of the Black January tragedy was the biggest exercise in collective punishment by reactionary forces of the Communist Party", the resolution says.

According to the authors, on January 20, 1990, Azerbaijan was invaded by 26,000 Soviet troops who stormed the capital city of Baku with tanks and armored vehicles. A courageous resistance by Azerbaijanis to the Soviet invasion continued into February.

The resolution cites Azerbaijan’s records mentioning that, 130 Azerbaijanis were killed, five went missing, over 611 were wounded, and 841 were arrested.

"The Soviet attack against innocent civilians in Azerbaijan followed massacres in other Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan (1986), Georgia (1989), and was tragically replicated one year later in Lithuania", says the paper adding, "the Baku incursion was an atrocity, but it also gave birth to a hope which led to the consolidation of the rising independence movements throughout the country, and united the Azerbaijani nation in their quest for freedom".

As the campaigner of the Senate resolution, US Azerbaijani Network thanked its members for their support to this process.

This is USAN’s seventh parliamentary resolution in US since 2011. Previously the Diaspora organization’s resolutions were on Khojaly Massacre, Azerbaijani Genocide and etc.