Last Born In The Wilderness

For this episode, Cynthia Jones and I speak with Liyah Babayan, local entrepreneur, business owner, activist, and Armenian refugee. In this conversation, Liyah goes over her life story, framing it within the cultural/historical/political framework of her home country of Azerbaijan, where she had spent much of her early childhood, before fleeing with her family from severe persecution and mass genocide. In the late '80s and into the early '90s, a pogrom was enacted against ethnic Armenians in the city of Baku (the nation’s capital and Liyah’s place of birth), as well as in surrounding areas, resulting in the expulsion, and mass murder, of thousands of Armenians. These events have been described as the Baku Pogrom: “From January 12, 1990, a seven-day pogrom broke out against the Armenians civilian population in Baku during which Armenians were beaten, tortured, murdered, and expelled from the city. There were also many raids on apartments, robberies and arsons. According to the Human Rights Watch reporter Rob