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Despite the fact that Sumgait pogroms have been widely documented with abundance of eyewitness accounts, those genocidal acts never received proper political and legal assessment, Head of the Foundation against Violation of Law NGO, ex-ombudsperson Larisa Alaverdyan told a press conference on Tuesday

"No compensation to the victims of those massacres ever provided. It should seem strange but the facts on the ground are simple as that. In a newly independent Armenia we haven't given legal, political and humanitarian assessment [to the pogroms]," Alaverdyan said.

To note, 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. 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.

Alaverdyan reminded the Soviet leadership decided to play down the anti-Armenian nature of the pogroms, calling them "acts of hooliganism" instead with only one of the perpetrators receiving the maximum death sentence.

"In Armenia no proper assessment has been given to those massacres where people were beheaded. There are reports that people were rewarded for beheadings as was the case with Ramil Safarov," Alaverdyan said. 
Marina Grigoryan, the author of the Ordinary Genocide project pointed to the fact that genocidal acts in Sumgait were orchestrated and well-coordinated and by Azerbaijani  authorities under the silent consent of the Soviet leadership.

"We have numerous eyewitnesses to prove that, even Azerbaijanis were speaking of that. Additionally, we have footages showing members of special forces units managing the massacres," Grigoryan said.