'34th Anniversary of 'Black January' Tragedy in Baku, Azerbaijan'

On the night of 19 January, as a result of military aggression of the units of the Soviet Army and special forces as well as contingents of internal troops against Azerbaijan, civilians, including children, women and elderly were massacred in the cities of Azerbaijan, including the capital Baku, by order of the USSR leadership. The reason for the uprising of hundreds of thousands of people was the desire to leave the USSR and have a free state. That's why they were brutally murdered by military units sent to Azerbaijan on the instructions of Nobel Prize “winner” Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev.

As a result of the Soviet occupying forces’ massacre 147 Azerbaijani citizens were martyred, 638 people were injured, four people went missing and 841 people were illegally arrested. As a result, the requirements of many international human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have been grossly violated.

At a time when everyone was afraid to express their opinion about this inhumane massacre in the totalitarian Soviet regime, National Leader Heydar Aliyev's courageous steps are still remembered as the historical truths. A day after the January 20 tragedy in Baku, the National Leader Heydar Aliyev, who went to the Azerbaijan's permanent mission in Moscow, sharply condemned this brutality at a press conference and called the Soviet leadership as terrorists.

After Heydar Aliyev, the only Muslim Leader in the Soviet administration, was forced to resign from the administration in 1987, Moscow`s bloody plans were put into practice in the South Caucasus. Encouragement of Armenia, the dream of unifying Azerbaijan's Karabakh region with Armenia, the KGB's bloody Sumgait operation in 1988, and the Baku January 20 massacre were just some of these bloody plans. All these were possible because Heydar Aliyev was no longer in the Soviet kitchen.

Being a basis for nationwide mourning, the January tragedy also demonstrated the firmness of the Azerbaijani people`s will, and determination. Unmoved by the Soviet army`s cruelty and the consequent imposition of a curfew in Baku, the people of Azerbaijan staged a massive rally in the city`s “Azadlig” square on January 22 to pay tribute to the martyrs of January 20. The burial ceremony at the Alley of Martyrs was attended by nearly two million people. By demand of the people, the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR even convened an extraordinary session and adopted a decision on the abolishment of the curfew in the city of Baku. Fearing people`s anger, members of the Azerbaijan SSR’s leadership at the time did not attend the session.

This epochal event was the deciding factor in forming Azerbaijani national identity and marked a turning point in restoring national independence. It was the January tragedy that turned a national liberation movement into a political reality and gave strong impetus to the Azerbaijani people`s struggle for independence.

The first political-legal recognition of the January 20 tragedy came on March 29, 1994, when Azerbaijan’s legislative body Milli Majlis (Parliament) adopted a relevant resolution on National Leader Heydar Aliyev`s initiative. The resolution read: “The deployment of the Soviet troops in the city of Baku and several other regions and the brutal killing of civilians, with the intent to suppress, to break the confidence and will of a people who by peaceful means demanded a new democratic and sovereign state and to humiliate their national identity as a show of Soviet army power must be regarded as a military aggression and crime of the totalitarian communist regime against the people of Azerbaijan.”

The people of Azerbaijan continue to hold the memories of the martyrs dear to their hearts. On January 20 of each year, thousands of people visit the Alley of Martyrs to pay their tributes by laying flowers, say prayers for the victims and express their condemnation of the perpetrators of the tragedy.

Dr. Elsevar Salmanov

Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan