Soviet Azerbaijan
29-10-2004, 04:37
"This is Svetlana Yvorin with Barda Regional News. As you can probably see behind me..." She stepped off to the side to reveal a landscape filled with tents, huts, and shabby structures. "We're standing on the outskirts of the Barda refugee camp. Over six thousand refugees and citizens call this their home. And today... It will be destroyed. By official order of Premier Sergey Tumeyovskiy, the Army's 31st Battalion, stationed in Barda, has surrounded the camp with their infantry vehicles and light armor. Some four thousand soldiers are, at this moment, surrounding this camp." She motioned with her hand to the top of a nearby knoll, a UAZ sat there with six infantry splayed all around it. She returned her gaze to the video camera, "It is not known what is to become of the refugees but our associates with the Soviet Azerbaijani State News have told us this similar scene is occuring at the nations other four notable refugee camps. SASN executives did not tell us much more information. Here comes a convoy of military trucks..."
Immediately after the statement, two dozen large trucks were seen entering the scene, maneuvering through the camp's tightly packed 'streets'. Azerbaijani soldiers were seen emerging and shouting orders to the camp's thousands of inhabitants over loudspeakers to gather their belongings and immediately evacuate. Many other vehicles, mainly civilian buses also entered the scene.
The men and women of the camp's populace were worried and deathly sick, afraid they would be killed in a mass-murder type setting, many older men and women were to faint, only to be hauled off by medical personnel. Children bawled and mothers sobbed as they gathered their handfuls of possessions. These were men and women who had fled nearby nations and settled, illegally, in Azerbaijan. Now the government was doing something about it...
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The operation took nearly fourteen hours before the entire camp was emptied. Soldiers went through the camp, lighting it on fire as engineering bulldozers stood by to begin burying the ashes.
Remaining structures were used as target practice for the battalion's weaponry and vehicles.
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The 6200 refugees were taken, along with the thousands of other refugees (nearly 30,000) were taken to nearby military bases where they were given temporary housing in hangars, storage sheds, and barracks. Each man, woman, and child was forced to strip naked where a number designation was writted on their back with a marker. They were allowed to put on basic clothes and were shuffled in a single file line towards the largest building on each base. Within each building were dozens of tables manned by three men each. Upon entering the facilities, the men and women were filtered into groups.
At each table they were given information about Soviet Azerbaijan, her rules, laws, and what-not including everything from major languages to major ancestral names. They were then reintegrated into a single line and forced through a small room. In this room sat four men at a long table. The first would hand the refugee a thick piece of paper with writing on it. The second would stamp it. The third would sign it. And the fourth would explain that it was the refugee's official document of citizenship into Soviet Azerbaijan. The men and women would then be given new clothes and be heralded into the same building they originated from where they would all be sworn an oath to the Azerbaijani flag, her creed, her anthem, and to the state. After this, they were fed and told that they would be sent across the nation to occupy vacant housing in the many cities of Azerbaijan. Whether they were of good quality or not wasn't of much concern as many of these people had been living in tents for years in the steppes of Azerbaijan. They would also be given the oppurtunity to live in rural areas or farm (they would consolidate larger farms to do this). Others would be given chances to work in state factories where they would be fed and given wages, no matter how meager, and given a decent place to live.
Immediately after the statement, two dozen large trucks were seen entering the scene, maneuvering through the camp's tightly packed 'streets'. Azerbaijani soldiers were seen emerging and shouting orders to the camp's thousands of inhabitants over loudspeakers to gather their belongings and immediately evacuate. Many other vehicles, mainly civilian buses also entered the scene.
The men and women of the camp's populace were worried and deathly sick, afraid they would be killed in a mass-murder type setting, many older men and women were to faint, only to be hauled off by medical personnel. Children bawled and mothers sobbed as they gathered their handfuls of possessions. These were men and women who had fled nearby nations and settled, illegally, in Azerbaijan. Now the government was doing something about it...
---------------------------
The operation took nearly fourteen hours before the entire camp was emptied. Soldiers went through the camp, lighting it on fire as engineering bulldozers stood by to begin burying the ashes.
Remaining structures were used as target practice for the battalion's weaponry and vehicles.
---------
The 6200 refugees were taken, along with the thousands of other refugees (nearly 30,000) were taken to nearby military bases where they were given temporary housing in hangars, storage sheds, and barracks. Each man, woman, and child was forced to strip naked where a number designation was writted on their back with a marker. They were allowed to put on basic clothes and were shuffled in a single file line towards the largest building on each base. Within each building were dozens of tables manned by three men each. Upon entering the facilities, the men and women were filtered into groups.
At each table they were given information about Soviet Azerbaijan, her rules, laws, and what-not including everything from major languages to major ancestral names. They were then reintegrated into a single line and forced through a small room. In this room sat four men at a long table. The first would hand the refugee a thick piece of paper with writing on it. The second would stamp it. The third would sign it. And the fourth would explain that it was the refugee's official document of citizenship into Soviet Azerbaijan. The men and women would then be given new clothes and be heralded into the same building they originated from where they would all be sworn an oath to the Azerbaijani flag, her creed, her anthem, and to the state. After this, they were fed and told that they would be sent across the nation to occupy vacant housing in the many cities of Azerbaijan. Whether they were of good quality or not wasn't of much concern as many of these people had been living in tents for years in the steppes of Azerbaijan. They would also be given the oppurtunity to live in rural areas or farm (they would consolidate larger farms to do this). Others would be given chances to work in state factories where they would be fed and given wages, no matter how meager, and given a decent place to live.