The proposal to publish the Address of Political Science Association of Armenia was made by its Chairman Hayk Kotanjian, Doctor of Political Science. The text of the Address is given below. ADDRESS TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF AZERBAIJAN REGARDING THE PROPOSAL TO EXAMINE THE DISCOVERED BURIAL SITE IN GUBA - AIMING FOR ITS OBJECTIVE SCIENTIFIC IDENTIFICATION Recently the Baku mass media disseminates information on building a memorial to the genocide victims on the mass burial site in Guba – a town in the North of Azerbaijan – initiated by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. The construction of the memorial started in 2010 in compliance with the order of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev. This fact is becoming a point for political manipulations targeted at escalating xenophobia and cultivating anti-Armenian sentiment. As a result of the visits at the given burial site by the President of Azerbaijan interspersed with Armenophobic comments, it is becoming a visiting site for foreign delegations in accordance with the state protocol. Meanwhile, in terms of contradictory information on the examination of the cemetery the very fact of burial and the objectivity of its identification requires international scientific review. The neighbouring country authorities’ official version actively circulating over the burial site is that the remains belong to the victims of the genocide allegedly committed in 1918 by the Armenians against the Jews dwelling in Guba. However, as the documents of the Central State Historic Archive of Russia attest, at that time the relations between the Armenians and the Jews were marked by exceptional friendliness and mutual trust: cases were observed, when the Jews in order to avoid persecutions within the Russian Empire expressed “strong will to adopt Christianity according to the Armenian rite”, some of whom thereby under the cover of the Armenian Apostolic Church, besides protection from persecutions in Russia’s territory were given an opportunity to covertly maintain their identity as well. Before the campaign for engaging the Jewish Diaspora organizations in the political manipulations over the discovered remains there appeared a version that the discovered remains belong to Muslims. “Anthropological studies have confirmed that these people are Muslims”, - according to an Azerbaijani source, - “Maisa Rahimova, Head of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, NAS, Azerbaijan said. She confirmed that the discovered burial site was one of the evidences of atrocities committed by the Armenians in Guba in 1918”. In these terms, Asker Aliyev, PhD in History, having participated in the expedition attests to the fact that “among a great number of skulls and child’s bones only 35 undamaged skeletons were found. No hair, remnants of clothes or things were found in the pits”. Namely, the Azerbaijani participant of the expedition affirms that there aren’t any archaeological facts which could be indicative of relevant religious-confessional features of the buried people. Thus, the version of Muslim victims which has no archaeological grounds is released. The given unproven hypothesis was adapted with time to the version of victims from the Jewish inhabitants of Guba. Lately information was made public about the visit at the mentioned mass burial site by the delegation of the Council of representatives of the Jewish Institutes of France which was on a visit to Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, there are also other versions explaining the discovered burial site. In the view of the President of the NAS of Azerbaijan, the remains discovered in Guba may be the result of both a mass destruction of people and an epidemic. The authoritative “Britannica” Encyclopaedia in the article “Azerbaijan” refers to the 1918 expedition of Turkish forces of Nuri Pasha fighting their way forward with the locals to Baku which in September of the same year ended with a massacre of thousands of Baku Armenians. As follows from the Turkish sources, Khalil Pasha having participated in the seizure of Baku confesses in his memoirs that the atrocities of Nuri Pasha against the Armenians, mass executions and massacres stirred up the resentment of the German officers serving in the Turkish army who described the actions of the Turkish command as “a mass massacre of Armenians”, and unwilling to be involved in it they resigned and returned to Tiflis. The people of Guba could become victims of this military expedition during which in August of 1918 the Turkish forces seized Guba inhabited mostly by non-Turkic peoples with different faith: Lezgins, Khinaligs, Krizes, Budugs (Muslims); Armenians and Udins (Christians); Mountain Jews (Judaists); Tats (Muslims, Christians, Judaists); and Molokans. The “Guban” impulse of xenophobia in relation to the Armenians, endeavouring to manipulatively involve the Jewish Diaspora in the process of intensifying anti-Armenian sentiment, as evidenced by the Azerbaijani sources, is set by the Head of our neighbouring state, whose order to build a Memorial of the genocide virtually canonizes the unverified version concerning the culprits of mass death of people buried in the excavated graves in the north of Azerbaijan as well as their ethnic confessional features. These days the policy of stirring up anti-Armenian sentiment among the Azerbaijani people is becoming more and more evident, especially after the cynical acquittal and awarding of the murderer of his sleeping colleague during the NATO training program, which arouse indignation and criticism of leaders of numerous states and international organizations. The policy of xenophobia in reference to the Armenian nation, widely cultivated by the Head of the Azerbaijani state publicly announcing the worldwide Armenians as the enemies of Azerbaijan, not even being squeamish about falsifying the genuine history of the relationship between the nations, including the Armenians and the Jews, is trying to draw the international community into the orbit of political manipulations. In January 2012, Professor Levon Yepiskoposyan, Doctor of Biological Sciences, aiming to academically establish the truth about the Guba mass graves, sent a letter to the President of the NAS of Azerbaijan Academician Mahmud Kerimov. Professor Yepiskopsyan, as the Academic Head of the Group of Human Genetics of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the NAS of the Republic of Armenia and as the President of the Armenian Anthropological Society made a proposal to initiate a qualified international expert review of the human remains found in Guba. Unfortunately, up to this day that letter hasn’t been responded to. In assistance to its colleague in his address to the President of the NAS of Azerbaijan Political Science Association of Armenia feels its commitment to render to the international community the full text of Professor Yepiskopsyan’s letter seeking for an objective expert examination of facts aiming to unveil the truth and put an end to the xenophobic speculations on Guba burial site. PROFESSOR YEPISKOPSYAN’S LETTER TO M. K. KERIMOV, THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE REPUBLIC OF AZERBAIJAN Yerevan 11 January, 2012 To Academician M. Kerimov, President of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Azerbaijan Honorable Mr. Kerimov! Once again I am requesting you to initiate a joint examination of human remains found recently in the mass grave in the north-western part of Azerbaijan to be conducted by Azerbaijani and Armenian experts (with possible involvement of experts from other countries). What I mean is the discovery of the two wells with buried bodies in Guba town in April 2007. At that time Professor M. Rahimova, Head of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Azerbaijan, announced that “the anthropological studies confirm that those people were Muslims”. In your turn, on 18 April, 2007, you declared that Azerbaijani scientists were to carry out a preliminary expert review of the remains found. It was also noted by you that the “remains found in Guba might be either the result of a mass massacre of people, or an epidemic”. That was a pure academic evaluation of the problem, and relevant experts were to be charged with its solution. Unfortunately, the results of the expected research, if they actually were carried out, were not published. Instead, some people, very far from of the academic science, undertook the political exploitation of this topic. Without any grounds the remains found were ascribed to the culprits of the punitive acts by the Baku Council, namely to Hamazasp’s unit, and as for the graves, depending on situation, they were acknowledged either Azeri, or Jewish, or Lezgin. Today guests hosted in Azerbaijan are led to the graves found, and they are told about “the Armenians’ atrocities towards the Azerbaijanis”. On 30 December 2009 the President of the Azerbaijani Republic issued a decree on the construction of the Genocide Memorial Complex in Guba. This order by the Head of the state formally legitimated the politically engaged version of the cause of the people’s death, which was neither verified by independent experts, nor sustained by scientific research. On 10 February, 2010 I addressed to you and the Head of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan with a proposal to let our experts participate in the joint anthropological and genetic examination of the remains found in Guba. Alas, there was no answer. We have all the grounds to presume that this very examination of the human remains found in Guba either was not carried out, or its results were not made public. Taking into account the consequence of future politicization of that problem, I again turn to you requesting to allow our specialists-anthropologists and genetics, highly experienced in the world’s leading laboratories, take their part in the examination of the remains found in Guba. I am quite sure that the results (whatever they may be) of an impartial joint scientific research will unveil the genuine cause and circumstances of the people’s tragic mass death which took place almost a century ago. Yours faithfully, Levon Yepiskoposyan, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Academic Head of the Group of the Human Genetics of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, President of the Armenian Anthropological Community.

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