Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Bloody streets full of corpses opened a horrifying scene in the capital Baku... Armenians killed Azerbaijanis in every corner of the city just because they were Azerbaijanis. The history recognizes those tragic days of March of 1918 as genocide of Azerbaijanis by Armenians.

"The Armenians, breaking into Muslim (Azerbaijani) districts, were killing everyone..." Kulner, German witness described those terrible days in Baku. "In 87 Azerbaijani corpses recovered a few days after the massacre from a well, ears, noses were cut off, bellies ripped open, and genitals chipped. The Armenians did not spare children and the elderly."

Ninety-eight years left from the date of the genocide committed by Armenian nationalists against Azerbaijani people.

The March genocide of 1918 was committed by the Armenian terrorist organization Dashnaktsutyun in an effort to establish an Armenian state on Azerbaijani territory through destroying the local ethnic population.

The collapse of the Russian Empire after the 1917 revolution opened up great opportunities for some Caucasian peoples to realize their political and national ideals and aspirations.

The anti-Azerbaijan policy of Armenian Bolshevik troops led by Stepan Shaumyan reached its peak exactly during that period.

Thus, Armenian armed brigades, by using the prevailing anarchic situation in the region, attempted to exterminate the Azerbaijani people.

Prof Atakhan Pashayev said that the rapid development of the oil industry in Baku in the 19th-20th centuries attracted a wave of Armenian migrants to the city.

“The Christian Armenians were obedient subjects of the Russian Empire, so the imperial government used them as a tool in their Eastern policy. The Armenians were, therefore, able to gain privileges from the government in Baku´s oil industry and soon became the major entrepreneurs in Baku oil. Armenians dominated the industry to such an extent that they were able to dictate their will to the Congress of Baku Oil Entrepreneurs,” he said.

Armenian workers, whose number increased considerably in the early 20th century, were active in revolutionary and socialist movements in Baku.

On the eve of the first Russian revolution the Armenian nationalist Dashnaksutyun Party began spreading socialist ideas among the Armenian oil workers.

The Dashnaks and other Armenian nationalist parties took advantage of the disintegration of the Russian Empire, when the Tsarist government was overthrown in the revolution of February 1918, and of the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution. They used the harsh, revolutionary ideas to promote their nationalist agenda.

Stepan Shaumyan could seize absolute power in Baku after his appointment a commissar of the Transcaucasus and used his position to fight the Azerbaijanis.

“Shaumyan could benefit the majority of Armenian officers and soldiers serving in the Russian army for his anti-Azerbaijan campaign,” Pashayev noted.

Beginning on the night of March 30 about 20,000 Azerbaijani civilians including women, children and the elderly were brutally killed in the genocide in Baku.

The Armenian vandals further spread to other regions of Azerbaijan to perpetrate a brutal massacre of the population throughout the country. Within a brief period of time many villages of Shamakhi, Guba, Lankaran, Salyan, and Mughan suffered cruel treatments, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands innocent people.

One of the witnesses who watched these terrible events hiding in the basement told that he was horrified of what he saw. “The Armenians had tied a samovar (a heated metal container) to one Muslim’s back and they had lit a fire too. The samovar was burning and boiling on the man’s back,” he said.

Within a few days of March a peaceful Azerbaijani population in these cities and the surrounding areas has undergone unprecedented and terrible massacres, beatings, captivity, plunder and destruction.

Armenian vandals carried away everything they could from houses and shops belonging to Azerbaijanis and then set them on fire.

Tragic events that took place in Baku damaged the city greatly. The vandals even did not leave water and products in the market and shops. Robbers gathered and carried away even food. The press was writing: “People were tortured by hunger”.

It should be noted that the attacks of the Armenian armed groups were not limited even after the establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan in 1920. For ten years, Armenian groups continued to commit attacks on civilians and ethnic cleansing was carried out to create Armenian autonomy in the northern region of Azerbaijan.

The bloody tragedy is still stick on mind of people in Azerbaijan, leaving bloody traces on memories of each citizen.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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