HAYK KOTANJIAN: POLITICAL SCIENTISTS AGAINST THE POLICY OF XENOPHOBIA OF THE HEAD OF THE AZERBAIJANI STATE
16:16 02.11.2012
Chairman of the Political Science Association of Armenia, Doctor of
Political Science Hayk Kotanjian sent an address to the Presidnet
of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan regarding the
proposal to examine the discovered burial site in Guba – aiming for
its objective scientific identification. The full test of the address
in presented below:
“Recently the Baku mass media disseminates information on building a
memorial to the genocide victims on the mass burial site in Guba –
a town in the North of Azerbaijan – initiated by the Heydar Aliyev
Foundation. The construction of the memorial started in 2010 in
compliance with the order of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.
This fact is becoming a point for political manipulations targeted
at escalating xenophobia and cultivating anti-Armenian sentiment.
As a result of the visits at the given burial site by the President of
Azerbaijan interspersed with Armenophobic comments, it is becoming
a visiting site for foreign delegations in accordance with the
state protocol. Meanwhile, in terms of contradictory information
on the examination of the cemetery the very fact of burial and the
objectivity of its identification requires international scientific
review. The neighbouring country authorities’ official version actively
circulating over the burial site is that the remains belong to the
victims of the genocide allegedly committed in 1918 by the Armenians
against the Jews dwelling in Guba.
However, as the documents of the Central State Historic Archive of
Russia attest, at that time the relations between the Armenians and
the Jews were marked by exceptional friendliness and mutual trust:
cases were observed, when the Jews in order to avoid persecutions
within the Russian Empire expressed “strong will to adopt Christianity
according to the Armenian rite”, some of whom thereby under the cover
of the Armenian Apostolic Church, besides protection from persecutions
in Russia’s territory were given an opportunity to covertly maintain
their identity as well.
Before the campaign for engaging the Jewish Diaspora organizations
in the political manipulations over the discovered remains there
appeared a version that the discovered remains belong to Muslims.
“Anthropological studies have confirmed that these people are Muslims”,
– according to an Azerbaijani source, – “Maisa Rahimova, Head of
the Instituteof Archaeologyand Ethnography, NAS, Azerbaijansaid. She
confirmed that the discovered burial site was one of the evidences of
atrocities committed by the Armenians in Guba in 1918”.In these terms,
Asker Aliyev, PhD in History, having participated in the expedition
attests to the fact that “among a great number of skulls and child’s
bones only 35 undamaged skeletons were found. No hair, remnants of
clothes or things were found in the pits”.
Namely, the Azerbaijani participant of the expedition affirms that
there aren’t any archaeological facts which could be indicative of
relevant religious-confessional features of the buried people. Thus,
the version of Muslim victims which has no archaeological grounds
is released. The given unproven hypothesis was adapted with time to
the version of victims from the Jewish inhabitants of Guba. Lately
information was made public about the visit at the mentioned mass
burial site by the delegation of the Council of representatives of
the Jewish Institutes of France which was on a visit toAzerbaijan.
Meanwhile, there are also other versions explaining the discovered
burial site. In the view of the President of the NAS of Azerbaijan, the
remains discovered in Guba may be the result of both a mass destruction
of people and an epidemic. The authoritative “Britannica” Encyclopaedia
in the article “Azerbaijan” refers to the 1918 expedition of Turkish
forces of Nuri Pasha fighting their way forward with the locals to
Baku which in September of the same year ended with a massacre of
thousands of Baku Armenians. As follows from the Turkish sources,
Khalil Pasha having participated in the seizure of Baku confesses in
his memoirs that the atrocities of Nuri Pasha against the Armenians,
mass executions and massacres stirred up the resentment of the German
officers serving in the Turkish army who described the actions of the
Turkish command as “a mass massacre of Armenians”, and unwilling to
be involved in it they resigned and returned to Tiflis.
The people of Guba could become victims of this military expedition
during which in August of 1918 the Turkish forces seized Guba inhabited
mostly by non-Turkic peoples with different faith: Lezgins, Khinaligs,
Krizes, Budugs (Muslims); Armenians and Udins (Christians); Mountain
Jews (Judaists); Tats (Muslims, Christians, Judaists); and Molokans.
The “Guban” impulse of xenophobia in relation to the Armenians,
endeavouring to manipulatively involve the Jewish Diaspora in the
process of intensifying anti-Armenian sentiment, as evidenced by the
Azerbaijani sources, is set by the Head of our neighbouring state,
whose order to build a Memorial of the genocide virtually canonizes
the unverified version concerning the culprits of mass death of people
buried in the excavated graves in the north of Azerbaijan as well as
their ethnic confessional features. These days the policy of stirring
up anti-Armenian sentiment among the Azerbaijani people is becoming
more and more evident, especially after the cynical acquittal and
awarding of the murderer of his sleeping colleague during the NATO
training program, which arouse indignation and criticism of leaders
of numerous states and international organizations. The policy of
xenophobia in reference to the Armenian nation, widely cultivated by
the Head of the Azerbaijani state publicly announcing the worldwide
Armenians as the enemies of Azerbaijan, not even being squeamish
about falsifying the genuine history of the relationship between the
nations, including the Armenians and the Jews, is trying to draw the
international community into the orbit of political manipulations.”