March 31 – Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis

By Oktay Bayramov

Special correspondent of the Azerbaijan State News Agency in Egypt

According to the decree by the late President of Azerbaijan on March 26, 1998, every year on March 31 Azerbaijanis commemorates the Day of Genocide committed by the Armenian nationalists and Russian Bolsheviks in the Baku city and other regions of Azerbaijan. This year the people of Azerbaijan once again pay their respect to victims of massacres and ethnic cleansing conducted as a result of imperial policies in the region of the South Caucasus and condemned the Armenian aggression.
Thus every year’s March 31 is known as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, referring to the tragic events that happened on March 31-April 1, 1918, as well as other tragic events in the 19th and 20th centuries that have brought enormous suffering to the Azerbaijani people. It is estimated that well over 500,000 Azerbaijanis have perished as a result of the Azerbaijani genocide.
After the proclamation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR) on May 28, 1918, the “March Events” were investigated by the ADR government. In 1919-1920, the ADR observed March 31 as a national day of mourning. This was the first-ever genuine attempt to give political and legal assessment of the policy of genocide against Azerbaijanis. No other nation has commemorated genocide as early as 1919. İt is remarkable that during the last decades the Azerbaijani genocide is well known in the world. There is a big role of the Azerbaijani government, especially our embassies around the World.
Unfortunately, Azerbaijani people were unable to commemorate the Azerbaijan genocide during the Soviet period. But the Soviet propaganda on the doubtful and forceful false brotherhood of the nations under communist regime had been collapsed and afterwards the massacres of the Azerbaijanis by the Armenian military forces has repeated after 74 years in the Khojali town of Azerbaijan.
“Armenia tries to build close cooperation with Muslim countries. However, Armenia, which destroys mosques that are sacred to the Muslims of the world, cannot be friends with Muslim states. This vandalism against our religion reflects Armenia’s Islamophobic nature”, said President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.
The aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, as well as its biased attitude towards Islam, led to the gradual destruction of Islamic cultural monuments on the territory of Armenia. Armenian vandals removed the traces of the Azerbaijanis in their historical native lands, besides they committed genocide against the toponyms specific to Azerbaijanis. The names of the 703 residential settlements formerly populated by Azerbaijanis were renamed Armenian names in monoethnic Armenian state.