Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry

While Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan angrily rejected the concept of “historical justice,” saying it degrades Armenians as victims, official Baku is pursuing the case for the so-called “Azerbaijani Genocide of 1918” supposedly carried out by Armenians.

“The people of Azerbaijan will never forget these tragic chapters of its history,” declared a statement by Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry on Tuesday, which apparently has designated March 31 as the “Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.”

In another blow to the decades-long fight for rights and the pursuit of the Armenian Cause, Pashinyan on Thursday lashed out by rejecting the notion of historical justice, saying the focus must remain the present. He also deemed the pursuit of the Armenian Cause as “Anti-Armenian.”

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, in its statement, claimed that in March 1918 6,000 “armed units of Baku Soviet,” with the assistance of another 4,000 members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation carried out massacres against Azerbaijani ahead of the both Armenia and Azerbaijan declaring independence in May of that year.

“This bloody policy of genocide at the beginning of the 20th century was continued in subsequent periods, and towards the end of the century it took on a systematic character with the mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from the territory of present-day Armenia, the massacres committed during the occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories, especially the Khojaly genocide, and other war crimes,” the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said.

Of course, official Baku made no reference of the violent pogroms it perpetrated against Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Shahumian in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Nor did it address Azerbaijan’s brutal attack on Artsakh in 2023, which resulted in the forcible displacement of the Armenian population there.

At press time there were no statement by Armenia’s Foreign Ministry addressing its Azerbaijani counterpart.

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