Azerbaijani residents commemorate victims of 1918 genocide

On the Genocide Day, Baku hosted a solemn ceremony of laying flowers at the obelisk of martyrs erected in memory of the victims of the March events of 1918.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that March 31 is marked in Azerbaijan as the Genocide Day of Azerbaijanis. According to the Azerbaijani version of events, in late March 1918, the armed formations of the Armenian nationalist "Dashnaktsutyun" Party, led by Stepan Shaumyan, committed, with the support of the Bolshevik leadership of the Baku Council, massacres and pogroms of Azerbaijanis.

On March 31 this year, members of the Azerbaijani "Musavat" Party visited the obelisk to the martyrs of the Caucasian Islamic Army, who perished in May 1918, and laid flowers, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent has reported.

Every year, the events held of March 31 remind of the tragic pages of history so that they never repeat again, Isa Gambar, a historian and the chairman of the National Centre for Strategic Thinking, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"There is no fundamental disagreement among Azerbaijani historians in assessing the events of the spring of 1918. There are many facts, historical records, photographs and eyewitnesses' memories of how [...] walked around Baku districts and shot Muslims dead. The same happened in other cities. In Shamakh, they burned down the people who hid in the mosque together with the religious temple," Rizvan Guseinov, a historian, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The events that happened 104 years ago are one of the bloodiest pages in the history of Azerbaijan, Nazakyat Mamedova, a political analyst, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. She has expressed fears that "new conflict phases between the neighbouring nations are inevitable," as long as there are "some revanchist forces" in Armenia.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on April 1, 2022 at 02:13 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.