Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

103 years have passed since the genocide committed by the Armenian Dashnaks together with the Bolsheviks against the Azerbaijanis.

The massacres that began in Baku on the night of March 30, 1918, resulted in the murder of about 20,000 innocent people, including many elderly people, women and children.

During the massacres that lasted from March 30 to April 2, Armenian Bolshevik groups led by Stepan Shaumyan killed thousands of people in Baku, burned Muslim shrines and confiscated property worth 400 million manat from the people of Baku. During the massacres, the Tazapir Mosque, the city's most magnificent mosque, came under constant artillery fire, and Armenians set fire to the Ismailiyya building, one of Baku's most magnificent architectural gems.

The genocide against Azerbaijanis was not limited to Baku. On March 31, Armenian Dashnaks killed 8,027 Azerbaijanis, including 2,560 women and 1,277 children in 53 villages of Shamakhi district. The number of innocent Azerbaijanis killed in 162 villages of Guba exceeded 16,000. Armenian Dashnaks burned thousands of villages in Lankaran, Mugan region and Karabakh and brutally killed tens of thousands of people. On July 15, 1918, the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry established by the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic collected and submitted to the government numerous documents related to these massacres. In 1919, the Azerbaijani parliament decided to mark March 31 as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis. Although this history was erased from the memory during the Soviet era, on the basis of historical documents during the period of independence, numerous researches were conducted and books were published on the tragic events that befell the Azerbaijani people on March 31, 1918.

On March 26, 1998, the great leader Heydar Aliyev signed the Decree "On the genocide of Azerbaijanis." From that day, March 31 is marked as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

On this occasion, events, commemorative ceremonies and conferences are held in various countries around the world.