Your trusted source

Rep. Adam Schiff has entered a statement into the Congressional Record on commemorating the 28th anniversary of Sumgait Pogroms.

“The pogroms were not an accident. They were the culmination of years of vicious anti-Armenian propaganda, spread by the Azerbaijani authorities. The Azerbaijani authorities made little effort to punish those responsible, instead attempting to cover up the atrocities in Sumgait to this day, as well as denying the role of senior government officials in instigating the violence. Unsurprisingly, it was not the end of the violence, and was followed by additional attacks, including the 1990 pogrom in Baku,” the statement says.

Congressman Schiff states that the Sumgait massacre and the subsequent attacks on ethnic Armenians resulted in the virtual disappearance of a once thriving population of 450,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan. Shciffs notes that even today the anti-Armenian hatred is celebrated in Azerbaijan at the highest level, recalls the glorification of Ramil Safarov as evidence.

“This April we will mark the 101st Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, an event the Turkish government … goes to great lengths to deny. We must not let such crimes against humanity go unrecognized, whether they occurred yesterday or 28 years ago or 100 years ago,” the Congressman says.