The Armenia’s Minister of Education and Science Armen Ashotyan held a public lesson in the Yerevan school N 187, devoted to the topic of Armenian pogroms in Baku in 1990. He told students the history of Baku and a role the Armenians played in the development of that city, and mainly focusing on the Armenian pogroms in Baku. “Some of my ancestors by my father’s side were from Western Armenia, they moved to Armenia after the Armenian Genocide, The ancestors by my mother’s side came from Zangezur. My mother studied in Baku, and her family moved to Yerevan after the Baku pogroms, ” Armen Ashotyan said, adding that in nearly every family in Armenia, somebody witnessed the Genocide. He also stressed that does not want the current generation remember their forefathers as refugees or victims of the Genocide.
“We can forgive people, but we cannot forgive the state of Azerbaijan, which still maintains the policy of biological annihilation of the Armenians,” Ashotyan stressed. According to him, the Baku pogroms proved that Armenians cannot live in Azerbaijan, as it was in Soviet times. “The people of Karabakh cannot live within Azerbaijan, since in that state rights of even its own citizens are totally violated,” Armen Ashotyan said.
The Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia conducts History lessons in secondary schools on the topic of Armenian pogroms in Baku in 1990.
On January 13, 1990, the Azerbaijani authorities instigated the the Armenian pogroms of 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 the above-mentioned date, 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.
