THE STATEMENT OF NKR NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
25 March 05
Eighty-five years ago on March 23 a tragic event took place:
massacres were perpetrated in the administrative center of Nagorno
Karabakh Shushi and the adjacent villages. This monstrous crime to
which 30 thousand peaceful citizens fell victims, was instigated
and committed by the authorities of the predecessor of the present
Republic of Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan with
the direct support and aid of the Turkish troops deployed in the
country. The massacres were perpetrated violating the provisional
arrangement between the Armenian National Council of Karabakh which
was an independent administrative and political unit then, and the
Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan according to which the legal status
of the region of Karabakh was to be decided at the peace conference
in Paris. As a matter of fact, the March massacres of the Armenians
of Shushi in 1920 continued in different ways and forms of ethnic
cleansing throughout the imposed existence of Nagorno Karabakh
within Azerbaijan and were concluded by the mass displacement of
the last inhabitants of the city in 1988. Condemning the March 23,
1920 massacre of the Armenian population of the town of Shushi and
the adjacent areas, the National Assembly of the Republic of Nagorno
Karabakh calls the international community to define these bloody
events of ethnic extermination as a crime committed by Azerbaijan
against the humanity – genocide.
AA. 25-03-2005