Baku, January 11 (AZERTAC). The Azerbaijani and Turkish Diasporas in the USA have embarked on a new campaign as they sent letters to US congressmen over anniversary of the 20 January tragedy in Azerbaijan.

The Diaspora members called on the congressmen to observe a minute of silence to commemorate January tragedy victims and issue an official statement.

The letters say ” On the night of Jan. 19-20, 1990, sovereign Azerbaijan was invaded by 26,000 Soviet troops pursuant to a “state of emergency.” A courageous resistance by Azerbaijanis to the Soviet invasion continued into February. Eventually, 170 Azerbaijanis were killed, 321 disappeared (their bodies never recovered), more than 700 wounded, and still hundreds more were rounded up and detained

In a report titled “Black January in Azerbaijan,” Human Rights Watch put the events into a larger perspective: “The violence used by the Soviet Army on the night of January 19-20 was so out of proportion to the resistance offered by Azerbaijanis as to constitute an exercise in collective punishment.”

The authors note that the Soviet attack against innocent civilians in Azerbaijan followed massacres in other Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan in 1986 and Georgia in 1989 and was tragically replicated one year later in Lithuania, although the brutality of the “Black January” tragedy was the biggest exercise in collective punishment by reactionary forces of the Communist Party”.

“The terrible event remembered by this commemoration was an atrocity - but it also gave birth to a hope that led eventually to independence and freedom the following year.

Eighteen years later, there is no sign of “Black January” declining in significance. Millions of Azerbaijanis and friends of Azerbaijan visit Martyrs’ Alley in the Azeri capital, Baku, on Jan. 20 to pay tribute to the memory of their compatriots who laid down their lives for the country’s independence. They lay flowers on the graves of the victims and the nation’s commitment to independence, democracy and freedom is renewed,” the letter says.