Ashot Melkonyan: Armenians of Baku greatly contributed the town's development

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenians of Baku greatly contributed to the town's development, but what they got in return was genocide and ethnic cleansing, RA NAS History Institute Director Ashot Melkonyan says.



"Following our victory in Artsakh war, we somehow forgot about propaganda struggle whereas Baku resorted to wide information campaign to give rebuff to its defeat," he told Tuesday a scientific conference dedicated to January 1990 Armenian pogroms in Baku.



At that, he noted that despite falling behind Azerbaijan in propaganda war, Armenian seeks to disclose to the world the true history of 1905, 1918 and 1990 ethnic cleansing and genocides that took place in Azerbaijan.



"We must raise the issue on state level, calling for proper assessment on the events," Mr. Melkonyan said.



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, 1990. 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.