Word: baku
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First the buzzer started ringing, then the furious knocking began. Cowering in his apartment in Baku, Ashot Arutyunov, an Armenian retiree, knew better than to open his door. The previous night, Azerbaijani thugs armed with address lists had begun hunting down Armenians house by house. If only he and his family remained quiet, Arutyunov thought, the ominous pounding would stop...
Shielded by soldiers, the couple, their daughter and Asya's 90-year-old mother were escorted to a car and taken first to the local police station and then to the docks of Baku. There, along with 600 other Armenian refugees, they boarded a ferry for Krasnovodsk in Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea. "I wrote a year ago to the central government asking for a residence permit in the Moscow region, but I was turned down," said Ashot, his eyes watery with tears. "We have no place...
...Arutyunovs' tale is but one chapter in the harrowing chronicle that emerged from Baku last week. An Armenian resident told how a group of hooligans used crowbars to try to break down her sheet-metal door. When that tactic failed, they threatened to pour gasoline through the mail slot and set the place on fire. "I knew it was time to leave," said the woman between sobs. "I have nothing left now but my apartment keys...
Even those who planned their escape had harrowing experiences. Last Sunday Marina Chobanyan, a widow, boarded the Baku-Moscow express to flee the gathering storm. She settled into her seat in the tenth car, thankful to be getting out alive; when the train did not leave on schedule, she began to worry. Suddenly a band of Azerbaijanis burst into the car. "I was ordered to hand over all my papers and valuables, including my wedding rings," she said. "I refused, and they dragged me off the train by my hair." Herded through the streets of Baku, Chobanyan and several other...
...Azerbaijani capital of Baku, crowds blockaded the Communist Party headquarters and the republic's television studio, while impassioned speakers called for the secession of Azerbaijan and its reunification with regions of northern Iran in a single Islamic state. Demonstrators aligned with a group identified as the National Front Defense Committee used buses and trucks to barricade streets and keep troops from entering the city. Along the southern frontier with Iran, the scene of nationalist protests earlier this month, thousands of Azerbaijanis illegally crossed to the other side and staged rallies calling for a joint struggle to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh...