By Ivan Gharibyan
YEREVAN. – Speculations on the bones of the victims of January 1990 continue to be an integral part of the policy of the Aliyev clan that is making every attempt to strengthen its authoritarian regime.
Every year during these days the Azerbaijani society becomes a victim of ideological terror of the authorities who are turning upside down the real events of the “black January”. The current “version” of Baku events dating back to 24 years was in a cynical way introduced by one of the most corrupted officials of the Soviet era – national leader of the Azerbaijani nation Heydar Aliyev. With every year, the story gathered like a snowball becoming more absurd. By changing his communist stance to the position of “national leader”, Aliyev took the easier path by trying to present the bringing of troops to Baku on the nigh of January 20 as a “terrorist attack of the authoritarian Soviet empire against freedom-loving Azerbaijani nation.”
We must admit that a part of western experts found this wording rather acceptable, and within so-called “caviar diplomacy” several dozens of European and American professors continue to claim that “peaceful demonstrators”, supporters of fascist Popular Front of Azerbaijan, were allegedly struggling against the Soviet empire. The western “experts”, who are working off the funds, forget to mention that even European Parliament on January 18, 1990 demanded that the leadership of the Soviet Union must bring troops to Baku as it was the only chance to save extermination of the Armenian population of the city. By the time when troops entered Baku, Armenian pogroms continued for a week.
But for the Azerbaijani propaganda machine the pogroms never existed. It is presented as if the members of Presidium of the Supreme Council saw a bad dream and suddenly decided to use force against “peaceful” Azerbaijanis.
The current policy of the Azerbaijani regime is in fact aimed at turning Azerbaijani people into well-managed crowd based on anti-Armenian hysteria. Only people deprived of historic memory, being accustomed to impelled propaganda, can be forced to put flowers to the monument of their leader’s father in every corner.
This is the image of Azerbaijani authorities, stuck in petrol dollars and corruption, who are mocking their own people and trying to continue to build an authoritarian state based solely on lies and distortion of historical facts. In this context, speculation on the bones of the victims of the tragic events of January 1990 and exaltation of “heroic deed” of those committing pogroms, some of whom subsequently died during bringing of troops to Baku, is not surprising. But this insanity can not last forever, even in Azerbaijan.
