Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

[ashot24]

For the souls of those who perished

COMMENTARY OF THE NKR MFA PRESS SERVICE
January 13, 2010 is the 20th anniversary of the Armenian pogroms in Baku, which had become the direct and logical continuation of the massacre of Armenians in February 1988 in another Azerbaijani city – Sumgait reputed to be “international”.

The unpunished evil was repeated, still on an expanded scale. The January 13-19, 1990 massacre in Baku, with the use of the most brutal and subtle methods of killing people, completed the ethnic cleansing of the Azerbaijani capital from Armenians – representatives of one of the state-constituting nations of the country, a nation representing the pride and fame of Baku. Thousands of Armenians in Baku deceased or became handicapped, and hundreds of thousands became refugees. Mainly children, old people, and women became victims of the really fascist atrocities.

The Armenian issue was resolved via the experienced Turkish tool – genocide, with the connivance of the central Soviet authorities, with the silent consent and participation of the Azerbaijani SSR leadership. And while the Soviet troops «were late» for 3 hours in Sumgait, they «were late» for a whole week in Baku, entering the city only when actually no Armenians were left there. The monstrous crime in Baku hasn’t got any political, legal or moral estimation so far. The very fact of the Azerbaijani authorities’ concealment of the atrocities against Armenians is outrageous cynicism. The lack of even a shadow of repentance, moreover, the increasing threats towards the Armenian people confirm that «bakus», «sumgaits», and «kirovabads» are still on the agenda of Azerbaijan's official policy. And all this is witnessed by the international community, which probably isn't going to take lessons from the past – as just the connivance of the international community made possible the bloody bacchanalia, which covered the whole territory of the AzSSR and achieved its peak in January 1990 in Baku.

The Armenian pogroms in Baku are one of the convincing grounds for the impossibility of Nagorno Karabakh(Artsakh) Republic’s being part of Azerbaijan.

The atrocities towards Armenians, which were systematically organized by the Azerbaijani authorities during the whole 20th century, emphasize once again the rightness of the Artsakh people struggling for freedom and defense of its primordial rights.

May Our Lord give peace and eternal rest in His Holy Kingdom to all of the ones who suffered and lost their lives in this horrible acts of inhumanity. May He bring peace to the hearts of those that survived and whose souls still struggle on the remembrance of those terrible days, that have impacted so hard on the lives of each and everyone of us, and are one of the reasons We, the people of Armenia, in love with peace and truth, equality and respect, fought, fight, and will keep fighting for the respect towards our rights, and our undeniable call for justice and truth.

[Eddo211]

Re: For the souls of those who perished

++ Rest In Peace ++

[Alexandros]

Re: For the souls of those who perished

May they rest in peace.

[Federate]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Remembering Black January and the Massacre of Baku’s Armenians



YEREVAN (Combined Sources)—A conference dedicated to the 1990 massacres of Armenians in Baku took place at the Armenian National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday. The symposium brought together journalists, scholars and politicians to explore the slaughter of Baku’s Armenians that began on January 13 and continued for a week before Soviet troops were brought into the city to end the violence.

The conference featured presentations by a documentary screening of journalist Marina Grigoryan’s film, titled “Baku January 1990: Ordinary Genocide.”

Speaking at the event were: the director of the National Academy of Sciences History Institute, Ashot Melkonyan, the director of the Center for Caucasus Studies at MGIMO, Vladimir Zakharov, a member of Armenia’s Public Council, Vladimir Movsisyan, and Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

“When commemorating the victims, we should highlight that the only thing they are to blame for was being Armenian,” Sargsyan said in his remarks. “Armenians were killed just for being Armenian.”

The pogroms resulted in the death of an estimated 300 Armenians. They came as a direct response from Soviet Azerbaijan to the hundreds of thousands of Armenian demonstrators urging the Kremlin to allow Karabakh to be part of Armenia in 1988.

To squash the movement, Azeri OMON (special forces) units had begun a systematic pogrom of Armenia’s in Sumgait in 1988. Those massacres were followed by a series of similar assaults on Armenians in Kirovabad, Baku and later in the Shahumian district of Karabakh.

Movsisyan reiterated those points during his own presentation, describing the pogroms as the continuation of a policy begun during the 1905-1907 massacre of Armenians in Baku, Nakhichevan and Shushi.

“We witnessed the most brutal expression of that policy in Sumgayit, Gandzak and Baku,” he said.

To this day the exact number of Armenian actually killed in Baku remains a mystery as no specific records were kept of the murders. The only solid statistics available are of the refugees. Baku was emptied of its entire 250,000 strong Armenian population within days. Leaving behind all their belongings to flee the carnage, most eventually found refuge in Georgia, Russia, Armenia and Karabakh.

Unfortunately the Armenian Authorities have failed to properly convey the truth about the Karabakh conflict to the international community, Zakharov noted in his presentation. “A policy needs to be formulated and carried out at the state level to counteract Azerbaijan’s misinformation campaign,” he stressed. “A special fund should be created to translate literature on the subject from Armenian into foreign languages.”

Zakharov explained that the root cause of the massacres was the advent and spread of Pan-Turkism. “Despite an official ban of all nationalist groups in the Soviet Union, xenophobic sentiment always existed in Azerbaijan.”

“Hatred against Armenians passed on from generation to generation and today the image of Armenians as an enemy to Azerbaijan is propagated at the national level,” he added.

That hatred gave birth to the massacres of 1988-1990 and eventually escalated the situation into a war when Azerbaijani forces invaded Nagorno-Karabakh to bring it under Baku’s control.

“Baku’s failure to win that war led it to present the events of 1988-190 as a genocide against Azeris perpetrated by Armenians,” Melkonyan said, discussing the Karabakh liberation war’s impact on the historical interpretation of the events within Azerbaijan.

In his remarks, Sargsyan alluded to the possibility that Azerbaijan’s continued warmongering and threats for renewed war could bring about a new crisis in the region. He compelled Armenians to unite and be prepared for “the serious hazards and challenges ahead.”

“The need for this doesn’t stem only from the Baku Pogroms of 20 years ago but also from the present reality that Azerbaijan maintains an official policy of hatred toward the Armenians.”

The event coincided with an official memorial ceremony at the Tsitsernagapert Genocide Memorial to commemorate the victims of the 1990 pogroms.

http://www.asbarez.com/2010/01/19/remembering-black-january-and-the-massacre-of-bakus-armenians/

[Federate]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Armenians protest near Azerbaijani embassy in Warsaw


Feb. 26, on the occasion of 22nd anniversary of the Armenian pogroms in Sumgait, Armenian community representatives in Poland held an action of protest in front of the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Warsaw.

The city authorities allowed demonstrators to head a procession along the street to the Embassy. The demonstrators were carrying Armenian flag and banners condemning the massacres in Sumgait and wishes to hand over a letter to the embassy employees. The staff members refused to take the letter claiming they did not speak Polish. The letter said of real Sumgait events, as well as appeal to the international community to recognize massacres of Armenians in Sumgait as a continuation of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Following the protest, the demonstrators gathered near the Armenian Embassy and lighted candles at the cross-stone. RA Ambassador to Poland Ashot Galoyan said that Azerbaijan seeks to spin a yarn about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He stressed that the action in front of Azerbaijani embassy is another proof that Armenians do not forget anything, and in case of necessity are ready to offer rebuff to false Azerbaijani propaganda.

T.P.

http://news.am/en/news/15482.html

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Protest action against Sumgait tragedy in Athens

Today, Feb. 27, at 11 a.m. on Vasilis Sophias avenue in Athens a protest action near Azerbaijani embassy was held. The demonstrators were chanting and making bold statements.

Youth Armenians of Greece headed to Azerbaijani embassy – carrying Armenian and Karabakhi flags, as well as banners condemning the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, perpetrated 22 years ago and demanding justice and forfeit.

The action aimed at joining Armenians worldwide, that also initiates protest actions raising voice against inhuman and shocking, but 22 years lasting crime never condemned and punished by international community.

According to the demonstrators, the impunity was the reason of innocent casualties as a result of massacres that heads and committers for crime did the same in Baku, Ghazakh, Khanlar, Dashkestan and Mingechaour and other cities of Azerbaijan.

The initiators of demonstration wanted to show solidarity to those who remembers as well as remind of Sumgait tragedy.

S.T.

http://news.am/en/news/15487.html

[Federate]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Armenian pogroms in Sumgait first sign of Azerbaijan’s neo-fascist policy


10:07 / 02/27/2010

By Ivan Gharibyan

Today, February 27, is the 22nd anniversary of the first ethnic pogroms in the Soviet Union’s history. On February 27-29, 1988, just a few days after the council of the people’s deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region decided to submit a request for the region to secede from the Azerbaijani SSR and form part of the Armenian SSR, unprecedented events in the multinational state’s history occurred in Sumgait.

The situation in the city, with lumpenproles constituting a major part of its population, was being exacerbated for several days. One more factor that complicated the situation was the absence of Jahangir Muslimzade, Head of the Sumgait Committee of the Communist Party — he was on holiday. A day before the pogroms first Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Kyamran Bagirov, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Hasan Seyidov tried to “cool the passions.” But the passions were running high at the Chemical Industry Workers’ Club in Sumgait, and the two top-ranking officials had to leave through the back door.

On December 27, the wave of popular unrest swept over the streets. The Azeri poet Khydyr Alovlu, a staunch supporter of the “national leader” Heydar Aliyev, played a key provocative role in the events. He is the person that held high posts in the Sumgait city administration later, when the Aliyev clan came to power in independent Azerbaijan. According to Azeri sources, at a rally on February 27, Khydyr Alovlu, who considered himself a poet, cried out “Death to Armenians!”

Jahangir Muslimzade, who was attending the rally, lost control of the situation. The local authorities and law-enforcers did not act. The local Komsomol organization had to apply to Baku for help in preventing a riot and murders.

The Armenian pogroms in Baku proved to be cold shower for the Kremlin, which was completely confused by the events that were taking place for the first time in the multinational state! According to official information, 32 Armenians were tortured to death, and hundreds of them were severely injured and disabled.

The Armenian massacre in Sumgait on February 27-29, 1988, which fact is being passed over in silence in Azerbaijan, proved to be the first sign of Azeri neo-fascism that was raising its head and later was rife and rampant resulting in Armenian massacres in Baku and Kirovadad, deportation of the Armenian population from the Shahumyan region, war unleashed in response to the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s demand for the right to self-determination.

Strangely enough, but even all the aforementioned facts are not the most terrible. Much more terrible and dangerous is the Azerbaijani leaders’ policy of sowing seeds of hatred toward the neighbors in their own people by distorting historical facts and misinterpreting the events of 1988-1994. The Aliyev clan’s style is far from being ingenious: they invented the “Khojali genocide” to consign the Sumgait pogroms to oblivion. But the civilians killed in Khojali were actually victims of a filthy domestic political struggle in Azerbaijan, which fact is never mentioned in Baku. And irrefutable evidence, including the statements by the then president of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov, is available. The same can be said of the Armenian pogroms in Baku on January 13-19. To hold back the truth, the Azeri leaders present the entry of troops to Baku to prevent the annihilation of non-Muslim population as Azerbaijan’s national tragedy.

It cannot be helped. The Azeri authorities continue their policy of turning their own people into a herd of cattle bereft of reason, without any knowledge of history. As the saying was in Nazi Germany “Our Fuehrer thinks for us.” This must be President Ilham Aliyev’s logic. By means of the mass media under his full control he is doing his best to develop the personality cult of his deceased father.

The only thing for us to do is to bow our heads before the innocent victims of the Sumgait pogroms organized by the Azeri cutthroats 22 years ago and thank the individual Azerbaijanis who, risking their own lives, saved their Armenian friends and neighbors.

T.P.

http://news.am/en/news/15447.html

[Mos]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

stupid Azeri dogs. And people say we can live with these people. Well at least we known that we are the better and more smarter fighters.

[Yedtarts]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Maraga April - 10 - 1992

Interview with Caroline Cox about Maraghar massacre

http://maragha.nk.am/index.html

[Federate]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Counter Perspective: Yerevan publishes thousands of Soviet-era documents to shed light on Armenian massacres in Azerbaijan


The Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office has started a new section on its official website where it presents thousands of documents and materials regarding the criminal cases initiated on pogroms of Armenians in Azerbaijan at the height of ethnic tensions in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods.

The webpage (www.genproc.am/sumgait) has four subcategories, three of which are named after the regions and locations where some of the atrocities took place: Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgait and Getashen. The section features testimonies of eye-witnesses, victims, their relatives and successors, exhibits photos and documents, the list of the killed, kidnapped and missing people.

The new database (in Russian) also names Azerbaijani law-enforcement who are now wanted by Armenia on charges of committing the extermination of Armenians in Armenian villages.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were displaced or fled their homes in Azerbaijan following a fierce response by local law-enforcement and government-backed nationalists to the demands of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to reunite with Armenia. Pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait, near Azerbaijani capital Baku, in February 1988 were followed by more attacks in other locations, including Baku, with virtually no Armenian left there by mid-January 1990.

The purges of the Armenian population in Azerbaijan proper were followed by military aggression against Armenians in Karabakh which led to heavy fighting in 1991-1994 and resulted in the area’s de-facto independence from Baku after an uneasy ceasefire brokered by Russia.

The work on the creation of the electronic archive of related materials launched in September 2009 was carried out by the prosecutor’s office jointly with NGO “Xenophobia Prevention Initiative” and a number of volunteers, and the website was created by programmer Aram Mkhitaryan.

“This is the first time such an initiative has been pursued through the efforts of the State and interested individuals. Besides, this project is also unparalleled in terms of its rich relevant archive video footage and photographs, which makes it even more so influential,” Mkhitaryan tells ArmeniaNow.

Samvel Martirosyan, a blogger and independent expert on information security affairs, says Azerbaijan spends millions of dollars every year to produce and disseminate content that misinforms the public on the late 1980s/early 1990s events. He says some of the dozen or so websites created in Azerbaijan to this effect every year continue to be further updated and advertised through two large state foundations.

Three websites presenting an evidence-based Armenian perspective have been created in Armenia so far this year.

“Even though fewer websites are created in Armenia, they are targeted and, unlike Azerbaijani websites that turn into spam, they are built in a more competent and influential way,” says Martirosyan.

A new section, “Baku”, is expected to be added in the resource soon. It will present applications and testimonies of Armenian refugees from Baku.

http://armenianow.com/news/26640/armenian_pogroms_azerbaijan_prosecutor_s_office_webpage

[lampron]

Re: Genocides of Sumgait, Kirovabad, Baku and Maragha

Genocide was the aim of Azerbaijan not just in Azerbaijan and Karabakh but in Armenia itself

The only people who stopped the campaign of genocide were Armenians themselves, specifically
the self sacrifice of Karabakh

It was clear that NATO, EU, Council of Europe, UN....would do nothing to stop these crimes