Baku pogroms: They took away Armenian girls who were more or less beautiful (video)
The mass killings and torture of Armenians in Baku in January 1990 remain fresh in the memories of witnesses. Sergey Ghukasyan, one of the survivors of the Baku pogroms, still remembers the stories of his uncle who was tortured in the basement of a house. “Men in clean clothes and Turkish appearance would appear every now and then and take away Armenian girls, who were more or less beautiful, in an unknown direction grasping them from their mothers’ arms. It is still unknown where these girls were taken,” says Mr Ghukasyan. After a mass rally held in Baku on January 13, 1990, the crowd entered the homes of local Armenians and began to beat, rape and kill them. Many were burnt alive. The pogroms lasted more than a week. When the Soviet government declared a state of emergency in Baku Armenians had already left the city. Sergey Ghukasyan also recalled another incident: when a Russian motorcade was passing near the Armenian district in Baku, Azerbaijanis required that they open fire on Armenians. “When Russian soldiers wondered how they could differentiate between local Armenians and Azerbaijanis, they told Russians to shoot everyone without exception: God would differentiate insiders.” Yury Ananyan, another survivor of the Baku pogroms, left his left his ancestral home in Baku. Today he lives in Sisisan and is still coming to terms with the past. “Anti-Armenian moods were felt everywhere in Baku. I was standing at a bus stop when I heard Azerbaijanis saying ‘we shall deport them all and only Azerbaijanis will stay in Baku.’ Many Armenians emigrated from Baku to Russia and the USA. Those who settled in Armenia today live in unbearable conditions. This is a shame for us, for the state and society,” says Marina Grigoryan, head of the Ordinary Genocide project. She has made a documentary - “A Century-long Genocide: Black January of Baku" - dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan. Marina Grigoryan says the film sheds light on the unresearched pages of the tragedy, with its reality distorted by the Azeri propaganda. The film is based on the interviews with refugees from Baku, with the full report to be released in a collection of materials in summer 2015.The director says ‘we possess powerful information which will help unmask Azerbaijan on the international arena.’ "I cannot understand why our diplomacy has not used these arguments by now as they could become a powerful tool in our hands,” said Marina Grigoryan.
