108 years have passed since the genocide of Azerbaijanis committed by Armenian dashnaks in collaboration with the Bolsheviks in March-April 1918. The mass killings, which began in Baku on the night of March 30, resulted in the deaths of approximately 20,000 innocent people, including many elderly individuals, women, and children.

During the massacres that continued from March 30 to April 2, Armenian-Bolshevik groups led by Stepan Shaumyan killed thousands of people in Baku, burned Muslim shrines, and confiscated property worth 400 million manats from the population of Baku. During the massacres, the Tazapir Mosque, regarded as the most magnificent mosque in the city, was subjected to continuous artillery fire, while Armenians burned down the Ismailiyya building, one of Baku’s finest architectural pearls.

The genocidal policy carried out against Azerbaijanis was not limited to Baku alone. Armenian dashnaks killed 8,027 Azerbaijanis, including 2,560 women and 1,277 children, in 53 villages of the Shamakhi district. The number of innocent Azerbaijanis killed in 162 villages of Guba exceeded 16,000. Thousands of settlements were burned in Lankaran, the Mughan region, and the mountainous part of Karabakh, while tens of thousands of people were brutally murdered.

The Government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic established an Extraordinary Investigation Commission to investigate the grave crimes committed by Armenians and adopted a number of measures aimed at preserving in the public memory the truth revealed by the commission and communicating it to the international community. However, following the collapse of the Democratic Republic, this process was halted, and a full investigation of the events, as well as its appropriate political and legal assessment, was prevented. Only 80 years later, on March 26, 1998, the

Presidental Decree “On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis”, signed by the National Leader of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, provided an adequate political assessment of these tragic events and declared March 31 as the “Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis”.

As a result of research conducted over the past 28 years, a significant number of new facts and documents have been collected, and a mass grave was discovered in the city of Guba. The revealed historical facts prove that the geography of the bloody acts committed by Armenian nationalists in March-April 1918 and in subsequent periods was much broader, while the number of victims of the tragedy was significantly higher.

Although this date was erased from public memory during the Soviet period, in the years of independence numerous studies have been conducted and books published based on historical documents about the tragic events that befell the Azerbaijani people on March 31, 1918.

The event held at Azerbaijan University was dedicated to the memory of the victims of the genocide and provided information about the historical causes and consequences of the March 31 genocide, as well as the role of these events in the fate of the Azerbaijani people. Particular emphasis was placed on the scale and nature of the mass killings, the importance of national memory, responsibility toward history, and the transmission of the truth to future generations.

Public Relations Department