On Jan. 20, the Azerbaijani- Americans and all Azerbaijanis around the world commemorate the 20th anniversary of "Black January" events that marked the beginning of the end of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan.
On the night of Jan. 19- 20, 1990, sovereign Azerbaijan was invaded by 26,000 Soviet troops pursuant to a “state of emergency.” A courageous resistance by Azerbaijanis to the Soviet invasion continued into February. Eventually, 170 Azerbaijanis were killed, 321 disappeared (their bodies never recovered), more than 700 were wounded and hundreds were rounded up and detained.
In a report titled “Black January in Azerbaijan,” Human Rights Watch put the events into a larger perspective: “The violence used by the Soviet Army on the night of Jan. 19-20 was so out of proportion to the resistance offered by Azerbaijanis as to constitute an exercise in collective punishment. The punishment inflicted on Baku by Soviet soldiers may have been intended as a warning to nationalists, not only in Azerbaijan, but in the other Republics of the Soviet Union.”
The Soviet attack against innocent civilians in Azerbaijan followed massacres in other Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan in 1986 and Georgia in 1989 and was tragically replicated one year later in Lithuania, although the brutality of the “Black January” tragedy was the biggest exercise in collective punishment by reactionary forces of the Communist Party.
The event was an atrocity, but it gave birth to hope that eventually led to independence and freedom the next year.
Eighteen years later, there is no sign of “Black January” declining in significance. Millions of Azerbaijanis and friends of Azerbaijan visit Martyrs’ Alley in the Azeri capital, Baku, on Jan. 20 to pay tribute to the memory of their compatriots who laid down their lives for the country’s independence. They lay flowers on the graves of the victims, and the nation’s commitment to independence, democracy and freedom is renewed.
My family and I are joining the U.S. Azeris Network in commemorating the tragedy and its victims, and ask for your support by also remembering the victims with a minute of silence and statement for the record.
Mehmet Yigit is an educationaltheory and policygraduate student at PennState. He lives in State College.
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