NKR WILL HOST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "AZERI TERROR AND POLICY OF ETHNIC CLEANSING"
PanARMENIAN.Net
29.01.2010 14:49 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Republic of Artsakh will host an international
conference "Azeri terror and policy of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh".
Conference marks 90th anniversary of March 23, 1920 Shushi tragedy
and 20th anniversary of Baku massacres of Armenians.
The conference aims to reveal and provide scientific grounds for
mistakes of the past, come up with offers to prevent terror and ethnic
cleansings in future, give political estimate of 20th century Azeri
policy of pogroms in Gandzak, Nagorno Karabakh and other Transcaucasian
regions.
The conference is organized by NKR Ministries of Education and
Science, Culture and Youth Affairs, Artsakh State University, "Kachar"
scientific center and Shoushi museum of regional studies.
Participation applications should be submitted before February 15.
Conference participants’ works will be translated into Russian and
English, and published based on final decision of conference board.
The town of Shushi is situated on a high plateau in the center
of Nagorno Karabakh, ten kilometers from the NKR capital city
Stepanakert. Due to its natural geographic location the plateau has
always had a strategic significance.
The first record about Shushi, the former administrative center of
Nagorno Karabakh, dates back to the XVIII century. The town preserved
its significance as a strategic outpost also in the beginning of the
XIX century, when Transcaucasus were under the rule of the Russian
Empire, and Nagorno Karabakh constituted part of the Elizavetpol
Goubernya (province) of Russia. It is by accident that one Russian
military figure wrote that "the one, who will take Shushi, will rule
over Karabakh."
Shushi grew and by the XIX century it became one of the spiritual
centers of the Caucasus. Political thinkers and the cultural elite
of the Armenians of the Caucasus were shaped here.
After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1918, the Karabakh
Armenians endured one of the most difficult periods of their history.
Azerbaijan made huge unfounded claims to Karabakh and Zangezur, the
historic territories of Armenia. Such actions of Azerbaijan were
supported by the tragic circumstances during World War I, as well
as by the patronage of the criminal authorities of Turkey. In 1915,
the Ottoman Empire carried out genocide of one and a half million
Armenian people in Western Armenia. The young Republic of Armenia was
already so exhausted that it could not defend the Armenian population
and assert its rights on Karabakh and Zangezur.
However, the population of Nagorno Karabakh and Zangezur refused to
recognize the jurisdiction of the newly created Azerbaijani Republic.
Azerbaijan, without having any legitimate rights to control this
region, tried to subjugate Nagorno Karabakh with the help of Turkish
troops. On September 15, 1918 Turkish troops entered Baku, and as a
result of the massacres, thirty thousand Armenians were murdered.
March 23, 1920 was the most tragic – the Turkish-Azerbaijani troops
burnt and plundered Shushi, the fifth largest town in the Caucasus.
Within three days, the population of the town decreased by 65%. The
Turkish Musavatist armed groups eliminated 25 thousand Armenians in
Shushi. Seven thousand well-furnished two-story houses and beautiful
cultural and administrative buildings were ravaged and turned to
ashes. The Armenian part of the town was burnt and was not rebuilt
until the beginning of the 1960s.
The Liberation of Shushi marked the first significant military
victory by Armenian forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave during
the Nagorno-Karabakh War. The battle was part of a larger territorial
land dispute by the local Armenian population in Karabakh, aided by
the neighboring Republic of Armenia, to gain independence from the
Republic of Azerbaijan.
The battle took place in the strategically important Azeri mountain
town of Shusha (known as Shushi to Armenians) on the evening of 8 May
1992, and fighting swiftly concluded the following day after Armenian
forces captured and drove out the defending Azeris. Armenian military
commanders based in Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital of Stepanakert had been
contemplating the capture of the town after a hail of Azeri military
bombardment had begun shelling that city.
The seizure of the town proved decisive. Shusha was the most important
military stronghold that Azerbaijan held in Nagorno-Karabakh –
its loss marked a turning point in the war, and led to a series of
military victories by Armenian forces in the course of the conflict.
However some of the shelling was, according to the accounts of former
residents, either indiscriminate or intentionally aimed at civilian
targets.
In January 1990, Azerbaijani authorities instigated the Armenian
pogroms in Baku. Some 400 Armenians were killed and 200 thousand
were exiled in the period of January 13-19. The exact number of those
killed was never determined, as no investigation was carried out into
the crimes.
On January 13, a crowd numbering 50 thousand people divided into
groups and started "cleaning" the city of Armenians. On January 17,
the European Parliament called on EU Council of Foreign Ministers
and European Council to protect Armenians and render assistance to
Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. On January 18, a group of U.S. Senators
sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev to express concerns over the
violence against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan and called
for unification of Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia.