[KavkazUzel] The pogroms in Sumgait became the starting point for Azerbaijan's actions against the residents of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, but the Armenian authorities are not taking measures to draw the attention of the world community to the topic of genocide, refugees from Sumgait indicated.
As the Caucasian Knot" wrote, the commemoration of the victims of the pogroms in Sumgait serves to understand that it is necessary to overcome hostility and prevent the repetition of such events in the future, the Armenian Foreign Ministry indicated.
The Sumgait pogrom was an ethnic riot in the city of Sumgait in the Azerbaijan SSR that lasted from the evening of February 26 to 29, 1988.
According to the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, 26 Armenians and six Azerbaijanis were killed in the riots, more than 100 people were injured, more than 200 apartments were looted, and dozens of cars were burned or smashed. Many workshops, stores, kiosks, and other public facilities were also destroyed. According to various later sources based on eyewitness accounts and death certificate analysis, the death toll was in the hundreds, according to the Caucasian Knot article "Sumgait Pogroms" published in the "Reference" section.
Refugees from the Azerbaijan SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh, NGO representatives and members of the Armenian parliament gathered at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan near the monument to the victims of the Sumgait tragedy.
The action was held at the initiative of the public organizations "Congress of Armenians - refugees from the Azerbaijan SSR" and "Against legal arbitrariness". Those gathered laid flowers and wreaths. About 200 people gathered for the action, representatives of about 10 local media outlets were present, a correspondent of the "Caucasian Knot" reported.
"What is happening to the Armenian people today is a direct continuation of what happened to the Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, Ganja and other populated areas," Nagorno-Karabakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan said at the rally.
The head of the NGO “Against Legal Arbitrariness” Larisa Alaverdyan recalled that “hundreds of thousands of Armenians were expelled from Azerbaijan as a result of mass killings and pogroms, and Azerbaijan’s policy of genocide continues to this day.”
"But so far Armenia has not made a single decision at the level of the National Assembly and the government to recognize Azerbaijan's actions as genocide, although this is a crime not only against Armenians, but also a crime against humanity," the human rights activist noted.
Those who think that the genocide was committed only at the beginning of the 20th century are mistaken, political scientist Edgar Elbakyan pointed out the actions. "At the end of the 20th century, there were Sumgait, Baku, Shahumyan, Maragha and many other Armenian settlements, and it continued in Artsakh ( the self-name of Nagorno-Karabakh, - note of the "Caucasian Knot" ) in 2020-2023. Instead of despairing, we must learn and take action," he said.
Secretary of the opposition faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Tigran Abrahamyan noted that Armenia has been conducting the process of internationalization of the recognition of genocides for several decades, but the current Armenian government ignores this. "They limit themselves to purely symbolic statements that mean nothing, and as such, the topic of its internationalization is not put forward," Abrahamyan emphasized at a briefing with journalists in Tsitsernakaberd, pointing out that Azerbaijan's impunity has led to actions against the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Now a pensioner, Engels Grigoryan lived and worked in Sumgait until February 1988. His family fell victim to the pogroms – his mother was tortured and killed before his eyes. The man was a witness at the trial of the pogrom participants. "I was only at the first hearing, because they were not trying the real criminals, and it was clear at the hearing that the true events were being hidden," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
As the legal successor of the USSR, Russia bears responsibility for the crimes against Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR, he is sure.
Karina Melzhumyan's family from Sumgait survived the pogroms and moved to Armenia in 1988. "The Sumgait pogroms lasted not two days, but four, and the Kremlin knows best how many were actually killed," she noted.
Meljumyan stated that “if the world had fairly condemned the Armenian genocide of 1915, the pogroms of Armenians since 1988,” then perhaps the events in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 would not have occurred.
Alvina Avanesyan said that her family was saved miraculously, simply because the crowd was distracted by the Armenian driver, who was beaten for a long time and then burned with his car.
"We managed to leave Sumgait because we accidentally learned from our neighbors about pogroms in other neighborhoods, and that they had seen our name and address on the list of Armenians. The crowd of pogromists had lists with the addresses of apartments where Armenians lived. I told this in court. But those I had noticed during the pogroms were not in the dock - they had recruited some teenagers. We, the victims, understood that there would be no punishment, that the facts would be hidden, and that the fact that the Armenian genocide continued in Sumgait would not be recorded. But the exact number of victims was not announced, but we know that there were more than was officially stated," the refugee from Sumgait noted.
She added that all the families from Sumgait who came to Armenia in 1988 were immediately provided with housing. But after the Spitak earthquake, the blockade, the war, the social problems of refugees from Azerbaijan were no longer a priority.
According to Avanesyan, it will be difficult for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh to survive without state support. "Many refugees from Sumgait and Baku, because they were unable to buy housing or find work here, left for other countries. As a result, the issue of our rights is not discussed, and our rights are not respected. The same awaits refugees from Artsakh if they do not more actively demand protection of their rights, legal and social," says a refugee from Sumgait.
Official Baku adheres to the version that the pogroms in Sumgait were provoked and organized by terrorist cells controlled by KGB agents. In publications on the anniversary of the tragedy, the Azerbaijani media write that hundreds of Azerbaijani families saved their Armenian neighbors from angry crowds. "The statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry is an attempt to hide acts of violence, the mass expulsion of the Azerbaijani population living in Armenia, terror against the Azerbaijani people, provocations on ethnic grounds, the use of military force by Armenia since the late 1980s," said Ayhan Hajizade, press secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, on February 27 in connection with the statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry regarding the events in Sumgait.