Baku pogrom
The Baku pogrom (Armenian: Բաքվի ջարդեր, Bakvi jarder) was a pogrom directed against the ethnic Armenian inhabitants of Baku, Azerbaijan SSR.[5][6][7] From January 12, 1990, a seven-day pogrom broke out against the Armenian civilian population in Baku during which Armenians were beaten, murdered, and expelled from the city. There were also many raids on apartments, robberies and arsons. According to the Human Rights Watch reporter Robert Kushen, "the action was not entirely (or perhaps not at all) spontaneous, as the attackers had lists of Armenians and their addresses".[8] The pogrom of Armenians in Baku was one of the acts of ethnic violence in the context of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, directed against the demands of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to secede from Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia.
This article is about the pogrom in 1990. For the massacre in 1918, see September Days.Baku pogrom
January 12–19, 1990
Local Armenian population
48 (Human Rights Watch)[1]
90 (Thomas de Waal)[2]
100+ (Aleksan Hakobyan)[3]
700[4]
History[edit]
The pogrom of Armenians in Baku was not a spontaneous and one-time event but was one among series of ethnic violence employed by the Azerbaijanis against the Armenian population during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.[9][10]
In 1988 the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, which composed 3/4 of population of the Oblast, started voicing their demands for the unification of the enclave with Armenia. On February 20, 1988 the Soviet of People's Deputies in Karabakh voted to request the transfer of the region to Armenia. This process took place in the light of the new economic and political policies, perestroika and glasnost, introduced by the new General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev who had come to power on March 10, 1985.[11][9] This unprecedented action by a regional soviet brought out tens of thousands of demonstrations both in Stepanakert and Yerevan, but Moscow rejected the Armenians' demands labelling them as "nationalists" and "extremists".[11] On the following day demonstrations were held by Azerbaijanis in Baku and other cities of Azerbaijan against the unification of Karabakh with Armenia, during which strong anti-Armenian sentiments were voiced, the common slogans were: 'Death to Armenians', 'Armenians out of Azerbaijan'.[9]
On February 27, 1988 a massive pogrom was carried out in Sumgait during which the Armenian population of the city was brutally slaughtered and expelled.[11][9][12] The Sumgait pogrom was followed by another pogrom against Armenians in 1988 in Kirovabad (today's Ganja), the second largest city of Azerbaijan from where all the Armenians were expelled.[13][14][15] In spring and summer 1988 the ethnic tensions were escalating between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. After the Sumgait tragedy a massive migration of Armenians from Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis from Armenia began.[16] By 1989 the Armenians stayed only in those places where they had a well-established community, including in Baku. By the beginning of 1990 there were only about 30–40 thousand Armenians left in Baku,[17] mostly women and pensioners.[11] Similarly, by the end of 1988, dozens of villages in Armenia had become deserted, as most of Armenia's more than 200,000 Azerbaijanis and Muslim Kurds left.[18]
In December 1989 The Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh passed a resolution on the formal unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, in accordance with the Soviet law on the people's right to self-determination.[19] The pogrom of Armenians in Baku took place shortly afterwards and according to a number of sources it was a direct response to this resolution.[20]