Your trusted source

This year marks the 29th anniversary of the pogroms of the Armenians in Sumgait. During the USSR collapse, in terms of actual complicity of the Azerbaijani authorities, there were pogroms and ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in several cities of the country – Baku, Kirovabad, and Maragha. The pogroms were especially cruel in the Azerbaijani city Sumgait situated 25 km away from the capital Baku, ambassador of Armenia to Spain, Avet Adonts told Spanish news agency EFE.

According to the ambassador, the large-scale and mass pogroms ended only in a few days, after the Soviet authorities decided to send their troops to Azerbaijan in order to prevent the pogroms of the Armenians. Only after that, the evacuation of the Armenians from Azerbaijan became possible.

Even the then Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov noted that the Soviet soldiers were terrified to see the mutilated bodies of the Armenians. The real number of the Armenians, who became victims of the Azerbaijani aggression in those days, is unknown.

According to the ambassador, it is difficult to believe that those events took place in the contemporary world, however, that was only the start of the anti-Armenian and racist politics of the Azerbaijani authorities. The organizers of the pogroms were declared national heroes in Azerbaijan. That terrible tradition went on in the future. The history proved the veracity of these words. Azerbaijan continues this policy after independence and attempted to repeat the crimes committed against the Armenians in the 20th century already in the 21st century. Therefore, Azerbaijan established the tradition of glorifying and awarding people for the murdering Armenians.

For example, the Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov, who axe-murdered the sleeping Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan during NATO program in Budapest, was declared a national hero in Azerbaijan.
In April 2016, Azerbaijan initiated another aggression against the population of Artsakh. International organizations pointed to Azerbaijan’s military crimes against the civilians, children, and elderly people in Artsakh. Shortly after the start of the Azerbaijani aggression, the local media spread photos of an Azerbaijani officer, who proudly demonstrated the photo of a beheaded Armenian soldier. In a month, president Ilham Aliyev personally awarded him.

Adonts notes that analyzing Sumgait pogroms and April events in Artsakh, one involuntarily remembers the Nobel Prize winner academic Andrei Sakharov’s words: “even if some doubted it before Sumgait, no one sees a moral opportunity to insist on territorial unity of NKAO and Azerbaijan after this tragedy happened.”
According to the ambassador, refusing to accept Sumgait pogroms and condemn its perpetrators is already a crime. However, instead the current Azerbaijani authorities do their best in order to distract the international community’s attention and use the millions if the state budget on propaganda.

The so-called campaign “Justice for Khojaly” serves that purpose. The Azerbaijani authorities try to disseminate the thesis that they were “killed” and they are victims instead of drawing certain conclusions and repenting. “In brief, it is immoral. There are facts, against which even the millions of the Azerbaijani propaganda are helpless,” the ambassador says.

According to him, Azerbaijan “inherited” the current style of propaganda from “brotherly” Turkey. When in 2015 the whole worlds was commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey, the authorities of which committed that crime, instead of repenting, decided to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Canakkale on the same day. It was another failed attempt to distract the international community’s attention. “We expect more creativity from our Azerbaijani and Turkish neighbors, who still keep the borders with Armenia closed attempting to prevent Armenia’s development,” the ambassador highlights.
Therefore, if Azerbaijan requires justice, first, it has to require from the brotherly Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide and respect the rights of national minorities. “But how can a country require justice, where an opposition journalist, who is not arrested, already causes surprise, the power is handed from father to son, and the president appoints his wife as vice president,” the ambassador emphasizes.
According to Adonts, it is necessary to accept that the civilization with a thousand years of history cannot “belong historically” to Azerbaijan, as that state does not even have a history of hundred years.
“For us, the Armenians, Artsakh is a motherland, and it is high time to accept that truth,” the ambassador says.

Summing up, Adonts notes that the policy of falsifying facts and conducting an anti-Armenian policy damages Azerbaijan first.

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.