'Black January' heroic page of struggle of Azerbaijani people for freedom
Azerbaijanis visit Martyr's Avenue on Jan. 20 to play tribute to the memory of victims and lay flowers on their graves.
This month Azerbaijan commemorates the 23rd anniversary of the Jan. 20 tragedy. On Jan. 20, 1990 – nearly two years before the official collapse of USSR ― Soviet leadership ordered a full-scale military attack on civilians in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.
The Azerbaijani people’s struggle to preserve the territorial integrity of their country began in 1988 and eventually developed into a national liberation movement. The failure of the USSR government to forestall renewed Armenian claims on Azerbaijan’s territory, and separatist activities in Nagorno-Karabakh, further bolstered the people’s national liberation spirit. Thousands of people protesting against the policy of the USSR held demonstrations all day long in the central square (now Azadliq or Freedom Square) and the streets of Baku. The leaders of the Soviet empire perpetrated the Jan. 20 massacre in Azerbaijan, a republic with strengthening tendencies toward independence.
Late at that night on Jan. 19, 1990, 26,000 Soviet Special Forces called “Alfa”, without declaring state of emergency, entered to Baku and committed ferocity action against innocent Azerbaijani people. The most sophisticated military hardware and equipment, tear gas and various types of arms and ammunition were used against unarmed innocent civilians, including women, children and elderly who tried to find shelter to hide from the sporadic gunfire.
As a result of the special operation conducted by the Soviet army in Baku and other parts of the republic, a total of 137 people were killed on Jan. 20, 1990, including more than 120 Azerbaijanis, six Russians, three Jews, and three Tatars. A total of 744 people were wounded, 400 people were arrested and four were reported missing. Those killed ranged in age from 12 and 73.
It was carried out by specifically trained units of the Soviet army against their own people. In 1986, indiscriminate force was used against civilians in Almaty, Kazakhstan; in 1989 in Tbilisi, Georgia; in 1991 in Vilnius, Lithuania; and later, in 1991 in Moscow during a self-defeating and ill-fated coup d’etat attempt. Human Rights Watch report, entitled “Black January in Azerbaijan”, clearly states: “Indeed, 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.
Since Soviet officials have stated publicly that the purpose of the intervention of Soviet troops was to prevent the ouster of the Communist-dominated government of the Republic of Azerbaijan by the nationalist-minded, noncommunist opposition, 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. Yet, contrary to the crumbling regime's hopes, these attacks convinced even those who had doubts that the time was ripe for independence from the agonizing and increasingly violent USSR.
On Jan. 21, 1990, Heydar Aliyev, who was living in Moscow at that time, came to Azerbaijan's permanent representative office in the Soviet capital, flatly condemned the crime perpetrated by the USSR leaders against Azerbaijan and its citizens, and expressed support for his people. In a statement made at the meeting, Heydar Aliyev gave a political assessment of the tragedy: As far as the developments in Azerbaijan are concerned, I am convinced that they run counter to the rule of law, democracy, humanity and the principles of state building in our country.
Also, the leaders of Turkey, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Arab world countries, Iran and a number of international organizations, including the Istanbul-based Eurasia Foundation, said that the massacre unleashed by the Soviet Union against civilians in Baku could not reverse the Azerbaijani people’s struggle for freedom and independence, adding that those killed on that horrific night had entered the history of the Turkic world.
For Azerbaijani identity, the date of Jan. 20, 1990 is a fundamental building block, which precedes the nation’s formal independence. The hilltop cemetery overlooking the Caspian Sea, the Martyr’s Avenue, established ad-hoc 23 years ago in spite of a curfew and military attempts to disperse the people, is a symbol of Baku today.
Although 23 years have passed since those bloody days, Azerbaijani people remember and commemorate the day of Jan. 20 tragedy broadly every year, which had immortalized in the vital memory of Azerbaijani nation as a Day of the Nationwide