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By Ivan Gharibyan

January 20 is a day of “national mourning” in Azerbaijan. This is the Aliyev clan’s interpretation of the tragic events in Baku in January 1990. The Azeri state propaganda has taken one episode out of the entire context of the tragic events – the entry of Soviet troops to Baku, which was the only way of establishing law and order in the city, with numerous acts of brutal violence and ethnic murders being committed there.

For nearly 25 years the tragic events in Azerbaijan have been designated as “suppression of the Azerbaijani people’s aspiration for freedom.” So what does, according to the Aliyev clan, the “Azerbaijani people’s aspiration for freedom and independence” mean? Nothing but mass pogroms of the local Armenian population in several cities, including the capital, gang rapes, including statutory rapes, burning people alive.

And now the rising generation in Azerbaijan is sure that, all of a sudden, the Soviet leaders decided to introduce troops into peaceful Baku, and those troops proved to be “extremely cruel.” And no one even asks: Why did the Kremlin order the troops to enter the capital of one of the Soviet republics? No. But we can only hear “moving” speeches about the “totalitarian Communist regime, which committed a terrorist act against the Azerbaijani people.” By the way, everything turns out tragically absurd at this point as well: the “national leader” Heydar Aliyev, who saved the Azerbaijani people from all the troubles, was an outstanding representative of the “totalitarian Communist regime.”

Xenophobia, the very essence of present-day Azerbaijan, has been especially obvious over the last few days. The official propaganda inadvertently betrays one of the pillars of the present-day ideology of “prospering” Azerbaijan – no room for other ethnic groups, especially ones practicing other religions, in the country. This is the conclusion one can draw from the numerous interpretations of the events in January 1990 offered by Azerbaijan. Of course, according to official Baku propaganda, beatings, rapes and murders on January 13-19 were not a tragedy. Moreover, nothing like that had ever happened. But the entry of Soviet troops to Baku on January 20 was “a national disaster.”

The fundamental principles of the Aliyev clan’s propaganda are nothing but a manifestation of neofascism: Armenian citizens of the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic could be murdered in cold blood without any problems, and those murders were manifestations of “the Azerbaijani people’s aspiration for freedom and independence.” But killing the participants in the Armenian pogroms as Soviet troops entered Baku was a “tragedy” – they were Azeris!

Yes, January 20 is a tragic date for the Azerbaijanis. It is a real tragedy when thugs and murderers are officially declared national heroes, when “a Shahids’ lane” is built in their honor for people, like a herd of cattle, to go up there to pay homage to the cut-throats’ memory.

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