Karabakh Political Parties Condemn 1990 Massacre of Armenians in Baku

STEPANAKERT—Three political parties represented in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s National Assembly, the Democracy, Motherland, and the ARFD-Movement-88 parties,  issued a statement Tuesday commemorating and condemning the 1990 massacres of Armenians in Baku and demanding legal justice be served to Azerbaijan for organizing the pogroms.

We present the translated statement below:

Statement Of The Political Forces Of The National Assembly Of The Nagorno Karabakh Republic

Twenty years ago, the massacre of the Armenian population was organized and coolly implemented on the state level in the capital city of Baku in the then official Soviet Azerbaijan. Thousands of innocent people – women, children and old people – were killed with extreme brutality, and tens of thousands of people, suffering from heavy physical wounds and moral shock, were deported and deprived of their homes.    

In fact, the January massacres in Baku became the finale of the violations and deportations committed towards the native and state-making Armenian population of the Eastern Transcaucasia in 1905-1906, 1918-1920, and 1988-1990. It was the specific response of the Azerbaijani authorities to the peaceful, just, and legal right of the Nagorno Karabakh people to worthy life in their homeland, which took place with the criminal connivance of the USSR authorities.

We, the representatives of the political forces of the National Assembly of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, condemning once again the violations committed towards Armenians in Azerbaijan during the 20th century, as a result of which the native Armenian population was deprived of its inalienable right to self-determination, in particular, the massacres, which started on January 13, 1990 in Baku, assess them as:

• A fact of mass violation of the human rights and freedoms, first of all, the right to life;
• Evident demonstration of the Azerbaijani state policy of xenophobia, national intolerance, and ethnic cleansing;
• The heaviest crime committed against humanity on the state level – Genocide, the responsibility for which, according to international law, has no time limitation.

The Nagorno Karabakh Republic will seek the legal assessment of the violations, deportations and ethnic cleansing implemented in Azerbaijan and the punishment of the organizers, regardless of their current political and public position and residence.

As demonstration of this legal and just intention, we call upon the UN, EU, OSCE, and member-states of the OSCE Minsk Group:

• To hold an impartial investigation of the violations committed towards the Armenian population in Baku between January 13 and January 20 and give the legal assessment to the actions of the organizers and executors of the crime;
• Not to equate the crimes organized on the state level in peaceful conditions with the privations, which the region’s peoples suffered due to the war unleashed by Azerbaijan.

To avoid further undesirable developments, we demand to condemn and use corresponding penalties towards the criminal state. This is not only the right of the sufferer, but also the duty of the international structures, as Genocide is a crime against the humanity.

“Democracy”
“Motherland”
“ARFD-Movement-88”
Factions of the National Assembly of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic

January 19, 2010
Stepanakert