THE Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) recently commemorated the 27th anniversary of the “Black January” invasion of the town of Baku by Soviet troops on January 20, 1990, that resulted in the death of 147 civilians and injury to 800 others.
Azerbaijan Honorary Consul to the Philippines Jose de Venecia III said the ADR government and its citizens remember Black January with sadness, as innocent civilians were victimized by the former Soviet government’s drastic step to put a stop to the growing nationalist independence movements among its former republics.
“The Philippines shares a similar history with Azerbaijan, as thousands of our compatriots fell to the violence of foreign invaders in our desire to assert our nation’s independence,” de Venecia said.
The honorary consul noted that according to the official investigation report by the General Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan, the Soviet government ordered the Baku invasion as an example to other Soviet republics, where public sentiment for independence from the Soviet Union during the perestroika period was growing.
The Azerbaijani investigation revealed Soviet troops—many of them veterans of the failed Afghanistan war and had strong bias against Islam and Muslims—fired indiscriminately on civilians regardless of age and sex, which led to the illegal arrest of 841 people. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, which caused both the state and its citizens to suffer amid huge material damages.
The Baku invasion came after hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani participated in a peaceful protest rally against violence suffered by 300,000 natives living in its neighbor Armenia.
The growing frustration by Azerbaijani over Soviet rule and the relaxed state controls on mass action encouraged open-public rallies by hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijan citizens, especially after the Armenian annexation of Nagorno-Kabarakh which, along with the strong statements from the Azerbaijani nationalist movements for a breakaway from the Soviet Union, was used by then-President Mikhail Gorbachev and the Communist Party leadership in Moscow to justify the declaration of a state of emergency in Baku.
De Venecia said Black January eventually led to Azerbaijan’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Subsequently, the Azerbaijan government of President Heydar Aliyev declared an annual commemoration of the tragic events.
Azerbaijan and the Philippines reestablished formal ties in 1992, as the current administration of President Duterte and the Azerbaijan government are working on stronger economic ties. De Venecia said both are working on potential oil and gas imports from Azerbaijan, as well as possible exports of tropical fruits and other products from the Philippines.
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Armenia never annexed Nagorno-Karabakh. I challenge the author of this article, or anybody else, to provide evidence for this claim. If Armenia annexed Nagorno-Karabakh, the leaders of both Azerbaijan and Armenia would not be meeting tomorrow to negotiate, once again, over the fate of this region. This article is part of Azerbaijan PR, considering Azerbaijan remembers “Black January” in January, not March.
Azerbaijanis themselves motivated Soviet troop involvement in January 1990 when the quarter million Armenians living in Baku were being subject to massive pogroms and violently expelled from the country. The selective deletion of this fact alone demonstrates the anti-Armenianism displayed in this article. With the expulsion of Armenians from Baku came an acute lack of doctors and dentists in Baku, and entire sections of the Azerbaijani State Orchestra were missing.
Slogans painted on the walls of Baku in January of 1990 read: “We give the Armenians one year, the Russians three years, the Jews five years.” JTA, January 24, 1990.
As an expression of the final assault on the Armenians, the President of Azerbaijan Elchibey stated in June 1992, “if there were any Armenians left in Karabakh by October they could hang him in the central square of Baku.” The indigenous Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh didn’t let this happen, and Azerbaijan was never able to depopulate Nagorno-Karabakh of Armenians. The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence and have administered the region for over a quarter century,
Azerbaijani land claims include Nagorno-Karabakh, capital of Armenia, the land in between, as well as the entire southern half of Armenia.
Yerevan, Armenia