March 31, commemorated in the Republic of Azerbaijan on a state level every year as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, reflects the memory of the bloody massacre committed against Azerbaijanis in March 1918. Being crazy with the fantasy of “the Great Armenia”, Armenians carried out a series of bloody massacres against Azerbaijanis between 1905 and 1907. Hundreds of Azerbaijani settlements were destroyed and razed to the ground, and thousands of civilians were brutally killed not only in Baku but in the villages located in the territory of the present Armenia. Perpetrators of those bloody events laid obstacles to elucidation and evaluation of legal and political essence of those acts, and introduced Azerbaijanis as murderers through which they tried to veil their own aggressive land pretension.

Since March 2, 2018, right at the beginning of tragic events, the Baku Soviet, under the pretext of combating counter-revolutionary elements, set about the plan to liquidate Azerbaijanis throughout the Baku Province.

On March 26, 1998, nationwide leader Heydar Aliyev issued a decree to announce 31 March as a National Day of Mourning.

On January 2018, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree to prepare and implement an action plan dedicated to the centenary of the 1918 genocide of Azerbaijanis.