INTERVIEWS
Signed by national leader Heydar Aliyev, decree on genocide of Azerbaijanis is a very important document
Q: Azerbaijan marks every March 31 as the day of genocide of Azerbaijanis. We would like you to highlight the history of the genocide carried out against our people. What role did resettlement of Armenians in Azerbaijan play in this process?
A: March genocide, which is the most terrible expression of genocide tragedies our people faced throughout the history, can be considered one of the tragic pages of the world history of 20th century.
The dismemberment of the Azerbaijani people and the division of the historical lands of Azerbaijan began with the Treaties of Gulistanand Turkmanchai, signed in 1813 and 1828. The national tragedy of the divided Azerbaijani people continued with occupation of their lands.
As the result of implementation of this policy, a very rapid mass resettlement of Armenians in Azerbaijani lands took place. The policy of genocide became an integral part of the occupation of Azerbaijani lands. Inspired by dreams of creating a “Greater Armenia”, Armenians, not even concealing their intentions, carried out a series of large-scale bloody actions against Azerbaijanis between 1905 and 1907. Hundreds of settlements were destroyed and razed to the ground; the thousands of Azerbaijanis were barbarically killed.
Q: What can you say of March events of 1918?
A: Taking advantage of the situation followed the World War I and the February and October 1917 Revolution in Russia, Armenians began to pursue the implementation of their plans under the banner of Bolshevism. Under the watchword of combating counter-revolutionary elements, in March 1918 the Baku Commune began to implement a criminal plan aimed at eliminating Azerbaijanis from the whole of Baku Province. The crimes perpetrated by Armenians in those days have imprinted themselves forever in the memory of the Azerbaijani people.
Solely because of their ethnic affiliation, thousands of peaceful Azerbaijanis were annihilated. The Armenians set fire to homes and burned people alive. They destroyed national architectural treasures, schools, hospitals, mosques and other facilities, and left the greater part of Baku in ruins.
The genocide of the Azerbaijanis was carried out with particular cruelty in Baku, Shemakha and Guba districts and the Karabakh, Zangazur, Nakhichevan, Lankaran and other regions of Azerbaijan. In these areas, the civilian population was exterminated, with villages put to the torch and national cultural monuments ruined and destroyed After the proclamation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, the
events of March 1918 were at the center of attention. In 1919 and1920 the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic observed 31 March as a national day of mourning. This was in fact his first attempt to give a political assessment of the policy of genocide against Azerbaijanis. However, the demise of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic left this work unfinished.
In 1920, taking advantage of the sovetization of Transcaucasia for their own vile purposes, the Armenians declared Zangazur and the number of Azerbaijani districts as a territory of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
On 23 December 1947 the Armenians secured the adoption of a special decision by the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the resettlement of Azerbaijanis from Armenian SSR to the Azerbaijani SSR, and between1948 and 1953 they were able to have mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from their historical lands conducted at the State level.
Beginning in the 1950th the Armenian nationalists, with the help of their protectors, initiated a flagrant campaign of intellectual aggression against the Azerbaijani people. In books, magazines and newspapers they sought to prove that the most treasured masterpieces of the national culture of the Azerbaijanis, their classical heritage and architectural monuments belonged to the Armenians.
Q: National leader Heydar Aliyev signed a decree on the genocide of Azerbaijanis on March 26, 1998. We would like you to highlight the importance of this decree…
A: The decree issued as a result of purposeful policy of national leader Heydar Aliyev on March 26,1998, on the anniversary of the March events, is a profound and comprehensive juridical-political assessment of the Armenian aggressors’ terror actions. This decree is some kind of program-document aimed to protect the national memory of present and future generations. Commemoration of March 31 as a Day of Azerbaijanis’ Genocide is assigned in this document that gives thorough analysis of massacre and deportation policy conducted for centuries against Azerbaijanis. The decree states: “After the Republic of Azerbaijan gained its independence a chance was emerged to create an objective view of history of our nation.
The truth kept in a secret and interdicted for a long years and distorted events gained their real assessment. The genocide committed against Azerbaijani people which has not received its political-juridical assessment is one of undiscovered pages of history”. The decree highlights historical core of the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan, the genocide committed step by step, as well as its terror policy
Q: Armenians are preparing to mark the 100th anniversary of their so-called Armenian genocide. What are political and ideological goals behind this move?
A: For many long years Armenians have been propagating their so-called genocide claim. They are trying to mislead the international community that the Ottoman state carried out genocide against its Armenian citizens in 1915. In fact this propaganda has neither political, nor legal or historical grounds. If there was genocide in the World War I it was committed against Turks. The most awful genocide was committed against Azerbaijanis.
I want to briefly highlight the main reasons behind these events. The main reason is that European countries and Russia wanted to annihilate the Ottoman state. Russia`s strengthening its position in the Caucasus, the collapse of the Ottoman and Iranian empires boosted the aggressive trends of Armenians.
Since its inception, the Armenian terrorism has been characterized by a number of important features. Firstly, the birth of international terrorism and organized terroristic groups are considered one of the vices and tragic pages of the 20th century. However, the Armenian terrorism arose as international terrorism in the 19th century and already had an organized, systematic, planned character since its inception.
The first Armenian political party Armenakan was established in 1885; its members operated not only in the Ottoman Empire and Europe, but also in Russia and Persia. The party Hunchak (“Bell”) declared terror its chief method of struggle against the Ottoman Empire, it was founded in Geneva in 1886. The 4th paragraph of the party program stated: “To achieve the objectives, the revolutionary government must resort to the movement of propaganda, agitation, terrorism, creation of subversive organizations, development of workers and peasants… Agitation and terrorism should serve to make people stronger and braver.”The other political organization – the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), also known as Dashnaktsutyun, was established in 1890 in Tbilisi.
The method of killing with cruelty and sophistication was repeatedly used by the Armenian terrorists not only against ethnic Armenians, who refused to participate in the inhuman acts of violence, but also against the civilian population of other nationalities, in the first place against Azerbaijanis.