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The Quba mass grave is a

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

site claimed to be from 1918 located in the town of

Quba Quba () is a city and the administrative centre of the Quba District of Azerbaijan. The city lies on the north-eastern slopes of Shahdag mountain, at an altitude of 600 metres above sea level, on the right bank of the Kudyal river. It has a po ...

in northeastern

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

. It was discovered during the building of a stadium in April 2007.

Investigation

Once the burial site was uncovered, the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the

Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) ( az, Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası (AMEA)), located in Baku, is the main state research organization and the primary body that conducts research and coordinates activities in the fields of ...

dispatched a forensic expedition to the location. The expedition released its first forensics report on April 13, 2007, stating that the preponderance of commingled skeletal remains suggests that the people were first executed and then thrown into wells, 2.5 to 5 meters deep. Gahraman Agayev, the leader of the forensic expedition, followed up on this by reporting the discovery of two main wells and two canals with human bones. The research has discovered the remains of more than 400 people belonging to different age groups in the grave. Of these, 50 belong to children, more than 100 to women and others mainly to elderly men. The Azerbaijani government stated that the burial was from a massacre committed against the local population by Armenians gangs in 1918.

Reactions

In response to the mass grave discovery, Levon Yepiskoposyan, supervisor of Human Genetics at the Institute of Molecular Biology in the Armenian National Academy of Sciences and president of the Armenian Anthropological Society, and Hayk Kotanjian, President of the Association of Political Science at the Ministry Doctor of Political Sciences, sent letters urging the President of the

National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) ( az, Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası (AMEA)), located in Baku, is the main state research organization and the primary body that conducts research and coordinates activities in the fields of ...

, Mahmud Kerimov, to form a joint committee to examine the remains found. As of 2013, those letters have not received a response from Azerbaijani officials.

Hayk Demoyan Hayk Demoyan ( hy, Հայկ Դեմոյան; born 1975) is an Armenian historian who served as the Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan, Armenia from 2006 to 2018. Demoyan was born in the city of Leninakan (now Gyumri) in ...

, the director of the

Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute The Armenian Genocide Memorial complex ( hy, Հայոց ցեղասպանության զոհերի հուշահամալիր, ''Hayots tseghaspanutyan zoheri hushahamalir'', or Ծիծեռնակաբերդ, '' Tsitsernakaberd'') is Armenia's official ...

, has stated that no foreign experts have examined the human remains.

References

External links

Genocide Museum to be built in Quba

Genocide Memorial Complex in Guba city
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