Baku,Azerbaijan-ADA faculty and students gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the killings of civilians and widespread destruction by the soviet army in Baku on and around the 20th of January 1990, a series of events commonly referred to in Azerbaijan as “Black January”.
Some 26000 Soviet troops stormed Baku, acting on orders by the USSR Government under Gorbachev, which had declared a state of emergency in Baku. More than 147 people were killed and more than 700 civilians were injured in the ensuing tragedy.
The Rector of ADA, Hafiz Pashayev, shared his personal memories about the tragedy, calling the resistance a heroic act of the Azerbaijani nation. He said that the intention of the soviet troops in Baku was to stop the USSR from breaking apart and that Azerbaijan was the first republic in the USSR to take a stand for independence, even before the Baltic republics. The traumatic events of Black January, he added, made it impossible for the Soviet troops stay in the country.
Afterwards, students of the ADA Advanced Foreign Service Program shared their thoughts on the tragedy and several read out essays on the memory of Black January.
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