Today at 12:00, a minute of silence was observed throughout Azerbaijan on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the 20 January tragedy.
Modern.az reports that ships docking at Baku Sea Port and cars moving on the capital's roads sounded their horns, and everyone commemorated the tragedy inflicted upon the Azerbaijani people.
In the Baku Metro, a minute of silence was announced, accompanied by the sound of whistles from trains.
It should be noted that on the night of January 19-20, 1990, by direct order of Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, troops of the USSR Ministry of Defense, State Security Committee, and Ministry of Internal Affairs were deployed to Baku and several regions of Azerbaijan, and the civilian population was subjected to mass killings by being fired upon with heavy equipment and various types of weapons. The occupation of Baku by special forces units and a large contingent of internal troops of the Soviet army was accompanied by particular cruelty and unprecedented savagery. Before the imposition of the state of emergency was announced to the population, military personnel brutally killed 82 people and fatally wounded 20. After the state of emergency was declared, 21 people were killed in Baku city within a few days. In districts and cities where the state of emergency was not declared – 8 more people were killed in Neftchala on January 25 and in Lankaran on January 26.
Thus, as a result of the illegal deployment of troops, 147 people were killed and 744 people were wounded in Baku and its surrounding regions.
Among those killed were women, children, and the elderly, as well as ambulance workers and police officers. The illegal deployment of troops was also accompanied by mass arrests among the civilian population. Throughout the operations, 841 people were illegally arrested from the capital Baku and other cities and regions of the republic, 112 of whom were sent to prisons in various cities of the USSR. Military personnel fired upon 200 houses, 80 cars, including ambulances, and a large amount of state and private property was destroyed as a result of fires caused by incendiary bullets.
In the actions of the Soviet troops, all the characteristics condemned by the international tribunal held in 1945-1946 and known to history as the Nuremberg trials were observed. In total, Azerbaijan has 150 martyrs of 20 January.
