As a result of purposeful ethnic cleansing and genocide carried out against the Azerbaijanis in the Caucasus during the last two centuries, our people have gone through national tragedies and hardships. Implemented in stages, this inhumane policy expelled the Azerbaijanis from their homes, devastated thousands of historical and cultural monuments and settlements.

The resolutions No. 4083 dated December 23, 1947, and No. 754 dated March 10, 1948 of the USSR Council of Ministers were criminal acts against the Azerbaijani people. Based on the mentioned resolutions, over 150,000 Azerbaijanis were deported from their native lands in the territory of the Armenian SSR. During the execution of these resolutions, which are contrary to legal norms, the repression of the authoritarian - totalitarian regime was widely used, thousands of people, including the elderly and children perished because of heavy deportation conditions, abrupt climate change, physical and moral genocide. Along with the criminal policy of the Armenian nationalist circles and the Soviet authorities, the position of the Azerbaijani leadership and its participation in arranging and implementing the crimes against our people played an important role in this crime.

Unfortunately, the deportation of the Azerbaijanis in 1948-1953 from the Armenian SSR has not been properly researched and legally evaluated in the past 50 years.

I hereby decide:

1. to create a state commission for comprehensive study of the mass deportation of the Azerbaijanis from their native lands in the territory of the Armenian SSR in 1948-1953, to give a legal and political assessment to the state-level crime against the Azerbaijani people, to publicize it internationally.

2. to assign the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan to solve all the issues related to the implementation of this decree.

Heydar Aliyev

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan