[10 March 1988]
Declaration issued by the Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksutiun) on the Killings committed by Tatars in Azerbaijan against Armenians
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) considers the massacres perpetrated by Tatars against Armenians throughout Azerbaijan a situation of utmost concern. These massacres are aimed at the heart of the entire Armenian people, from Armenian to the Diaspora.
Undertaken in reaction and in response to the just and lawful demands of the Armenian population of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh, these unbridled barbarities by the Tatars – with their concealed yet obvious scheme of uprooting the Armenian populace from their homes and lands in an efforts to make those areas purely Tatar – ferociously victimize the Armenians living within the Soviet borders in a wave of anti-Armenian rampage. Akin to the historic precedent set during the days of the Tzarist Empire, and particularly reminiscent of 1905, the Tatars of Azerbaijan – as a consequence of the deplorable political role played today by the Azerbaijani proponents of Pan-Turanist policy, such as Aliyev – have evidently embarked upon the massacres of the defenseless Armenian citizens who fall within their grasp.
Bringing this deadly threat to the attention of international public opinion, and especially to the attention of leadership in the Soviet Union, we demand that the perpetrators of these massacres by duly unveiled and brought to justice. We also expect that Soviet authorities take the necessary steps to stem the tide of these atrocities.
The Diaspora Armenians – who through their national and political bodies and organizations, have already manifested their solidarity with the just demands of the Armenians in Karabagh and Armenia regarding the Karabagh questions – cannot remain indifferent to these deplorable events.
Most of all, the A.R.F. (Dashnaksutiun), which has always manifested its determination to counter by all means the dangers threatening the physical existence of the Armenian people, will not remain indifferent.
Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksutiun)
[Press announcement, March 10, 1988]
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 118-119.
