Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova, who is on a visit to Azerbaijan, visited the so-called Alley of Shahids and paid homage to the memory of the organizers of and participants in the Armenian pogroms in Baku in January 1990.

The Habarlar news program on the Azerbaijani TV showed Bokova, with a sad face, to lay a wreath at the eternal flame. She was also told the story of the Alley of Shahids, with the thugs presented as “heroic sons and daughters of Azerbaijan.”

NEWS.am reminds readers that Armenian pogroms began in Baku on January 13, 1990. Rapes, murders and torture were the essential feature that distinguished the pogroms. According to the official information of the then Azerbaijani leaders, more than 90 Armenians were murdered. The pogroms attacked Russian citizens as well. With the Azerbaijani leadership paralyzed, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet decided to declare a state of emergency in Baku on January 19. The national fascists of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan offered resistance to the Soviet troops entering the city to stop the pogroms. It was only the Soviet troops, which entered Baku at the request of the European Parliament on January 18, that were able to put an end to the extermination of the city’s Christian population. The pogrom-makers killed during the military operation were made into national heroes in independent Azerbaijan and buried in the Alley of Shahids.

However, the aforementioned facts do not prevent numerous foreign guests from laying wreaths at the Alley of Shahids. Let us face it! The UNESCO Director-General must be regarding the memory of thugs as an integral part of the world cultural heritage. No wonder, though. If it came to RF Minister of Defense Anatoliy Serdyukov’s recent visit to the “Şəhidlər Xiyabanı”, whereas the “shahids” fired at Russian serviceman and their families in the bloody days of January 1990, we can do nothing but say: no comments.