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The tragic events of the “Bloody Sunday” in January 1972, when mostly unarmed civilian protesters were killed on the streets of Derry in Northern Ireland, might be much similar to the events in Azerbaijani city of Sumgayit in 1988. There, Armenians were being executed for the sake of their ethnic origins, just because few days before, the legislature in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast capital Stepanakert applied with a petition to the Kremlin to re-join Soviet Armenia, says the online analytical publication “Foreign Policy Journal” in an article titled “A War That Has Been Neglected Since 1994.”

The publication notes that the policy of pogroms against Armenians later unfolded in Baku, Kirovabad, and other cities and villages of Azerbaijan in the late years of the Soviet Union’s existence. And although the Soviets staged some prosecutions to punish anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgayit (and not anywhere else), only few suspects got prison terms for “hooliganism and mass riots.” Instead of blaming and shaming for the ethnic cleansings, most suspects were freed in the courtrooms or sentenced to conditional terms.

And before conflicting diplomats and mediators may come to terms for conflict resolution, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno Karabakh are still fighting, the article continues. The Armenian Defense Ministry reported on April 27 that the Azerbaijani army has been shelling with sniper and artillery fire the borderland villages of Tavush region in Armenia, including onto a school and kindergarten. Three soldiers of the Armenian army have been killed, another one wounded.

Azerbaijani officials and the media indirectly confirmed the incident. The Armenian Foreign Ministry asked the Personal Representative of OSCE CiO to dispatch an emergency monitoring mission to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. The two OSCE observers were already in place on April 30 and recorded the incidents, it is said in the publication.

Ahead of parliamentary elections in Armenia on May 6, this situation affects the domestic political stability and threatens the national security more than ever, leaving for this tiny country in the Caucasus no other option than to engage militarily, “Foreign Policy Journal” writes.

The President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, has already manifested an “inevitable” and devastating answer to punish for the ceasefire violation, while OSCE Minsk Group co-Chairs rushed to urge the parties “to abstain from retaliatory measures,” but didn’t utter anything about strengthening the ceasefire regime monitoring capabilities.

“This is exactly the time when the international community should urge Azerbaijan to comply with long-negotiated confidence-building measures – pulling back snipers and allowing installation of ceasefire violation mechanisms to avoid any new escalation that the region is obviously rushing into,” says “Foreign Policy Journal.”