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Panorama.am has already reported that in the frameworks of the project "Ordinary Genocide" the second volume of the collection of "Sumgait tragedy: Eyewitness Accounts” is planned to be published. According to the project manager Marina Grigoryan, publication of the second volume is the continuation of the work that was started immediately after the genocide in Sumgait. At that time, under the supervision of Samvel Shahmuradyan, the testimonies of those who had suffered directly, lost relatives and survived through the terrible tragedy were collected and published. The first volume of the collection was published back in 1989; it was translated into nine languages and was re-released last year.

According to Marina Grigoryan, evidences of more than 50 people, written both 25 years ago and recently have been depicted in the second volume. Besides, the collection includes several newspaper articles dedicated to "Sumgait" and published in the Soviet and world press in different years. The book will come out in Russian in late March.

Marina Grigoryan also noted that the third volume is to be prepared; it will include materials of criminal cases on Sumgait events, as well as the indictment of the USSR Prosecutor's Office of Azerbaijan on the case which was being investigated by the Supreme Court of the USSR in October-November 1988.

In connection with the 26th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in Sumgait Panorama.am continues publishing some of the most terrible and tragic episodes of Sumgait that have been included in the second volume-Brutal simultaneous murder of the brothers Albert and Valeriy Avanesyans.

Vladimir Baluyan evidence: Lived at Sumgait, Builders North Str.bld.13, apt.11

On February 26, protests started to take place in the town. Thousands of Azerbaijanis gathered at Lenin Street, in the square. Almost half of the town was there. They were openly speaking and shouting, “Down with Armenians”. That same night the attacks on Armenian departments began. I myself witnessed how they overturned a car with the driver inside and then burnt it together with the driver. The car was burning. Everyone saw that. The Police were standing and simply watching. The Police during those days didn’t intervene at all; they pretended that nothing was happening as if being afraid of thugs themselves. I was told that frequently the police told the bandits where Armenian houses were and sent them there.

The facts prove that everything was planned beforehand. The bandits stood at the streets, stopped the cars and if the driver was an Armenian they dragged him out of the car and started to beat, slaughter, kill but if the driver was an Azerbaijani they allowed him to go.

The Azerbaijanis, on the first day, were warned to turn off lights in the apartments, while on the second day ordered to keep lights switched on as the Armenians started to turn off their lights. In that way they learnt where Armenians were living and were Azerbaijanis.

I saw with my own eyes how they were walking with a list on their hands and one of them was reading: in such house and on such floor an Armenian was living. Then they started to go from entrance to entrance in different groups. For instance when they learnt that an Armenian was living on the second floor, 20-25 people were sent there.

There were 24 apartments in our house; in 7 of them Armenians were living. Our neighbors learnt and informed us that at night bandits would break into the house. One Armenian young man went to a military unit and made a deal to take all the Armenians of our house there. At night around three o’clock the bandits tried to attack the military unit but didn’t manage to do that. In the morning the commander called to the town committee of the party and told them that Armenian refugees are in their unit but they couldn’t t keep us in military unit. We were taken to the town committee by the guards. We spent there a day and then we were driven out. We were simply required to leave the place. They formed a corridor on the road, on both sides of which were tanks. By that road we, guarded by paratroopers, were transferred to the club on the opposite side of the road. There, we somehow settled on the floor.

On the following morning I learnt from my Azerbaijani friends that my wife’s brothers (Albert and Valeriy Avanesyan, 32 and 30 years old respectively) were lying dead in front of their house. I went there with my friend on his car. The corpses were not in the yard anymore, they had been taken to the morgue. Their father and mother, themselves beaten, were sitting in the yard and crying. I learnt about the circumstances of the murder from them. It was impossible to enter their apartment: there was already nothing there: everything was destroyed.

The parents told me that the bandits entered their apartment at night. Their sons were struggling, trying to keep the door closed but didn’t manage to do that as the amount of bandits were high: 50-60 people, armed with crowbars, stones, fittings.

And it was there where the children saved their parents. They sent them to the third floor, to the Russian neighbors while themselves went into the yard to distract the bandits. If they had gone to the neighbors as well, the bandits would have followed and killed all of them. One of the brothers ran in one direction and the other into another, while the bandits split into two groups (15-20 people) and followed them. The neighbors were sting on the third floor and looking how they slaughtered the boys.

The neighbors told that the bandits threw stones on the brothers then started to spurn their faces, their bodies. They hit Alik’s head by a crowbar then started to beat with a knife and then poured water on his face to see whether he was alive or not. When he regained consciousness, came to himself a little bit, they started to finish off with him: threw stones on him, spurned him….So, they killed him right on front of the house entrance.

The neighbors called police three times and they were told that police would be there soon. However, the police came only in four- five hours.

Then, I went to morgue and saw how the murdered laid stacked on each other. There were many naked people, many women with cropped hair, young girls completely shaved. It was clear that the bandits scoffed at them, cut their hair in the apartments and then took them out into the yard. I saw about 18 corpses in the morgue. The day following I went back to take the bodies of the boys but I was not allowed. I was told that the bodies had been taken to Baku.

All the bodies in the morgue were mutilated and desecrated; particularly the heads and faces were seriously damaged. The bandits beat especially that parts of the body so as the blood would pour over the face and it would become impossible to recognize the bodies. Judging by the wounds those people were beaten by stones, pipes, crowbars, iron cables.

In the club I heard that about 600 people were killed, while recently I learnt about 310. A countryman came to me from Sumgait and told me that in the town committee they saw the list with the names of 310 killed Armenians.

March 11, 1988.
Yerevan

Panorama.am doesn’t publish the photos of murdered Albert and Valeriy Avanesyans for ethical reasons. Additional materials and photos are available on the website karabakhrecords.info.

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, 27 Armenians 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 the Azerbaijani KGB. Executioners of Sumgait were subsequently declared as national heroes of Azerbaijan.

Documentary “Ordinary Genocide: Sumgait 1988.”