Today, March 31, is the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.
108 years have passed since the genocide event.
Between March 30 and April 3, 1918, in the city of Baku and various regions of Baku province, as well as in Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Hajigabul, Salyan, Zangezur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan, and other areas, the Baku Soviet and armed Armenian Dashnak detachments committed genocide against Azerbaijanis.
According to official sources, nearly 12,000 Azerbaijanis were killed as a result of the genocide, and tens of thousands of people went missing.
The Armenians skillfully took advantage of the February and October revolutions of 1917 that occurred in Russia and managed to realize their claims under the Bolshevik banner. Starting from March 1918, under the slogan of fighting anti-revolutionary elements, the Baku Commune began implementing an infamous plan aimed at cleansing the Baku province of Azerbaijanis.
During the March massacres, the Armenians shelled many ancient buildings, historical monuments, including pilgrimage sites, and the Ismailiyya building, considered a gem of world architecture, causing destruction. As a result of shelling by the military fleet stationed in the Caspian Sea, the minarets of the Jumah and Taza Pir mosques were severely damaged. The Dashnak armed detachments burned the corpses of people they brutally killed in the caravanserai right there.
Taking advantage of the Sovietization of Transcaucasia for their ugly purposes, the Armenians declared Zangezur and some other Azerbaijani lands as the territory of the Armenian SSR in 1920. In the subsequent period, to further expand the policy of deporting Azerbaijanis from these territories, they resorted to new means. For this, they achieved at the state level the deportation of Azerbaijanis from their historical lands in 1948-1953 based on the special decision of the USSR Council of Ministers on December 23, 1947, "On the relocation of collective farmers and other Azerbaijani population from the Armenian SSR to the Kura-Aras lowland of the Azerbaijani SSR."
In 1988, the deportation policy was continued, and nearly 300,000 Azerbaijanis living in Armenia were forced to leave their homes.
It should be noted that the March massacres were commemorated on March 31 in 1919 and 1920 by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic as a national day of mourning.
After Azerbaijan gained independence, the opportunity was obtained to create an objective picture of the people's historical past. In the decree "On the genocide of Azerbaijanis" signed by the national leader Heydar Aliyev on March 26, 1998, these events were given a political assessment, and for the first time the genocide of Azerbaijanis by Armenians was officially declared. March 31 - the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis is commemorated annually at the state level in our country. It is no coincidence that this process later became one of the main directions of Azerbaijan's foreign policy.
Recently, facts revealing the mass murders committed by Armenians during the 1918 events in Guba have come to light. Countless human bones found are tangible evidence confirming Armenian vandalism during these massacres. The Guba Genocide Memorial Complex has been established in this area as proof of the killing of tens of thousands of people and as a sign of respect for their memory. The Memorial Genocide Museum of the Azerbaijan Military Prosecutor's Office also plays an important role in conveying Azerbaijan's historical truths and the massacres and slaughters carried out against our people by Armenian nationalists to the world community.
It should be noted that this genocide has still not been given a legal assessment on the international level.