Your trusted source

On February 28th, more than 40 young people representing all organizations of the Armenian community in the U.S. (the Armenian Youth Federation, Armenian Church Youth Organization, the Armenian National Committee of America "Hay Dat", the Armenian Assembly of America, etc.) held protest in Washington dedicated to the 26th anniversary of Sumgait pogroms.

Representatives of the Armenian-American community protested against the ethnic cleansing and massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad, Maragha and elsewhere organized by the Azerbaijani authorities in response to the liberation movement in Artsakh.

The demonstrators demanded that the Azerbaijani side stopped undertaking steps towards war resumption, arms’ race, as well as the ignoring of basic appeal of the leaders of the OSCE Minsk Group to prepare its population to establish peace in the region, instead of embedding blind Armenophobia.

They called on the international community to be more vigilant towards the anti-Armenian propaganda of Azerbaijan led at the state level, one of the victims of which became the Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan, whose murderer was recognized as a hero in Azerbaijan.

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.”