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Tomorrow, on February 28, at 11:30, in Yerevan a procession will be held to Armenian Genocide Memorial – Tsitsernakaberd – where the cross stone (khachkar) in memory of the Armenians tortured and killed in Sumgait city of Azerbaijan on February 27-29, in 1988, is installed.

The procession is organized by series of non-governmental organizations. The former inhabitants of Sumgait will also take part in mourning ceremony, people who have passed through indescribable tortures and hell, have lost their relatives and friends in the result of massacre, have received physical injuries and have become enabled. Representatives of Armenian Public Council, YSU student’s organization and other youth organizations as well as intellectuals, series of experts, journalists and human rights defenders togather with the former inhabitants of Sumgait will put a wreath at the cross stone.

On 26-29 February 1988 in terms of actual complicity of local authorities and inaction of the USSR government mass pogroms of civilians were organized in Sumgait city of Azerbaijani SSR, accompanied with unprecedented brutal murders, violence and pillaging against the Armenian population of the city. Armenian pogroms in Sumgait were carefully organized. At the meetings, which began on February 26 in the central square, city leaders openly called for violence against the Armenians.

On February 27 protests which were attended by hundreds of rioters turned into violence. Armed with axes, knives, specially sharpened rebar, rocks and cans of gasoline and with the pre-compiled lists of apartments where Armenians lived the rioters broke into the houses, turning everything upside down there and killing the owners. In the same time, people were often taken out to the streets or to the courtyard for jeering at them publicly. After painful humiliations and torture the victims were doused with gasoline and burnt alive.

On February 29 army troops entered Sumgait but without an order to intervene. Only in the evening, when the mad crowd began to attack the soldiers the military units took up decisive steps.

The exact number of victims of Sumgait pogroms is still unknown. According to official data, 32 people were killed; however there is ample evidence that several hundred Armenians have been killed in the city in three days. There is also evidence that the riots were coordinated by KGB in Azerbaijan. Executioners of Sumgait were subsequently declared as national heroes of Azerbaijan.

Documentary “Ordinary Genocide: Sumgait 1988”