Armenians in Baku in 1988. (imago images / SNA / Victor)

Baku Massacre 35 Years Later: Remembrance and Denial

384
0

Except for April 24, recognized internationally as the anniversary of the beginning of the Ottoman genocide, it is not common practice for major German media to observe Armenian commemorations. Recently, that changed. On the 35th anniversary of the Baku massacres, the leading public broadcasting radio station featured it on its “Calendar page” spot on January 12. And, although it lasted barely five minutes, the broadcast provoked a decisive response.

Daniel Guthmann, a prizewinning filmmaker who has covered Azerbaijani-Armenian conflicts, interviewed Tessa Hofmann on Deutschlandfunk (German radio) to remember the “Pogrom against Armenians in the Azerbaijani Capital Baku.”

Tessa Hoffmann

By way of introduction, he recalled that the Armenian-populated Nagorno Karabakh (also called Artsakh in Armenian) “had been handed over to Azerbaijan by Stalin against the explicit will of the Armenians, though with an autonomous status” and, as the USSR disintegrated, they “wanted to join the Republic of Armenia.” Hofmann, genocide researcher and Armenia expert, added that Yerevan “at that time supported their desire.” She reported also that, in the course of the reignited conflict, Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia.

These victims of expulsion, Guthmann explained, contributed to spreading hatred against those Armenians still residing in Azerbaijan. They had not forgotten the Sumgait massacres just two years earlier, which had claimed the lives of 50 Armenians. Guthmann described the massacres that began in January 12 in Baku by quoting the brutal scene of an attack on a church, from a novella entitled Stone Dreams by Azerbaijani writer, Akram Aylisli.

Hofmann characterized the massacres as premeditated and planned: perpetrators broke into targeted homes that had been marked by Christian crosses or the words, “Armenians live here”; they set homes on fire, pushed inhabitants off balconies, raped, massacred, and killed residents with clubs or knives. A hundred Armenians perished at the hands of “fanatical Azerbaijani nationalists,” said Guthmann.

It was not only a commemoration but a timely condemnation: “An era which we all thought had ended, the era of pogroms, has resurfaced,” he said. This was a quote from an Open Letter that appeared in the New York Times on July 27, 1990, signed by intellectuals Juergen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Elie Wiesel, and others. They wrote: “The situation of Armenians in the Caucasus is, in fact, too serious for us to remain silent. There are moments when we must assume the moral obligation to assist a people in peril.” Now, Guthmann said, 35 years later, the Armenians’ plight in the Caucasus is even more difficult and serious, following the September 2023 aggression by “Azerbaijani dictator Aliev’s troops, who conquered Berg-Karabakh and expelled the Armenians from their homeland.” Unlike 35 years ago, however, from the “so-called civilized world hardly a cry of indignation has been heard.”

Get the Mirror in your inbox:

The Banality and Brutality of Denial

It must be said, that some cries of indignation have, indeed, been heard, but from other quarters. They have come loud and clear — from Baku itself. On January 14, Report.az, Caliber.az and Azernews, among other official Azerbaijani news outlets, published nearly identical articles responding to the program. “The Western Azerbaijan [sic] Community,” they reported, “has strongly condemned a slanderous broadcast aired on Germany’s public radio channel, Deutschlandfunk, on January 12, 2025, accusing it of spreading biased narratives against the Azerbaijani people and state.” They had “deep concern” over the interview with “notorious Azerbaijanophobe [sic] Tessa Hofmann,” for having “allegedly perpetuated [sic] claims of illegal actions against Armenians in Azerbaijan in 1990 … through the lens of radical Armenian nationalist narratives.” The not otherwise identified Western Azerbaijan Community had, in a statement, reportedly denounced the “racially discriminatory broadcasts of Deutschlandfunk” and officially called on the radio to “condemn Armenia’s policies of racism” instead. To date, there has been no response from Deutschlandfunk.

Significantly, in these articles from Baku no mention was made of the Azerbaijani novelist whom Guthmann had quoted. Akram Aylisli had been hailed as a national author and decorated by the president himself in 2002. Following the release of his novella, Stone Dreams, in 2012, which depicted the anti-Armenian pogroms, he lost his honors, his title, his pension, his membership in the Writers’ Union, his freedom to travel, and had reason to fear losing citizenship. His books were burned in public, and no longer circulated in schools. His wife and son lost their jobs. It was even mooted that he might be an ethnic Armenian.

Topics: pogroms
Get the Mirror-Spectator Weekly in your inbox: