THE POGROMS THAT THE BBC NEVER MENTIONS

THE BBC’s Orla Guerin has been reporting from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku, giving vent to the misery and rage of Azeri Muslims who had fled from their former home of Nagorno-Karabakh.

This is the fallout from the conflict of 30 years ago when that territory declared independence, backed by the majority ( Christian) Armenian population.

Two weeks ago, with military support from Turkey, Azerbaijan began a new war with Armenia to seize the land back: hence Guerin’s trip to Baku. But strangely lacking from her reports is any mention of what also happened in Baku (and other Azeri cities) 30 years ago: bloody pogroms against the local Armenian population, in which hundreds were massacred.

It is a well-attested fact: the U.S. Congress produced a statement declaring that: ‘In January 1990 ... a crowd of about 50,000 divided into groups and began raiding and invading Armenian homes, brutalising the inhabitants, including women and children, destroying and burning houses. The violence, killing, rapes, beatings and forcible expulsion of Armenians persisted between January 13 and 20... Not until the evening of January 20, after most of the Armenian population had fled or been expelled from Baku, did the Soviet army intervene to stop the seven-day massacre.’

Years ago, I got a first-hand account of this from the former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, whose mother Klara was part of the Armenian community in Baku. He told me how he desperately chartered a plane to rescue his mother and members of his extended family from the Azeri capital.

And, as he said later, this was a well- organised massacre, for all its apparently senseless violence: ‘When the pogrom-makers go purposefully from one district to another, from one apartment to another, this means they had been given the addresses and that they had a co-ordinator.’

Orla Guerin should try speaking to some Armenians in Baku. If she can find any left.