22 April 2022

We must inform the international community about the injustices committed against the Azerbaijani people and the resettlement of Armenians to Azerbaijani lands in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a historical fact that Zangezur was severed from the rest of Azerbaijan and handed over to Armenia by the Soviet government in 1920. The fact that the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic ceded Iravan to Armenia two years prior to that is also a well-documented fact. In 1921, the Soviet government was preparing to perpetrate another provocation against us. Zangezur was taken away from us in November 1920, and a year later, the Caucasus Bureau wanted to take Karabakh away from us as well. However, it didn’t work, and the decision was made to keep Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, a year and a half later, on 7 July 1923, a completely unfounded and artificial entity was established in the territory of Azerbaijan – the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. There was no basis for that. At that time, the number of Azerbaijanis living in present-day Armenia was probably twice as high as that of Armenians living in Karabakh. Still, for some reason, this autonomous region was established here, not there.

… Then the mass deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in the 1940s and 50s was a great tragedy and yet another injustice against our people. Azerbaijanis were forcibly relocated from their historical lands to the Mil-Mughan zone of Azerbaijan.