Monday, November 25 2019 16:27

ArmInfo. Armenia condemns any attempts to speculate on issues related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, particularly the tragedy of Sumgait, in the context of  addressing domestic political issues. This was stated by the press  secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Anna  Naghdalyan, commenting on the statements of the President of  Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev about Sumgait, the press service of the RA  MFA reports

"Sumgait pogroms have been well documented, and Azerbaijan's  distortion of the facts is a dangerous manifestation of denial that  incites and advocates hatred towards Armenians and genocidal  tendencies. Mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed against  the Armenians,  and the lack of condemnation and moreover  justification of massacres in Baku, Kirovabad, Maragha, Talish and  elsewhere, government-fueled anti-Armenian rhetoric, glorification of  Ramil Safarov and other murderers of Armenians; all these undermine  confidence building and damage the peace process.

By revealing Azerbaijan's intentions and the pursued policy of  altering Artsakh's demographics through decreasing the Armenian  population and increasing the Azerbaijani population, the President  of Azerbaijan further emphasizes the validity of the primary concerns  of the Armenian side regarding the existential physical security of  the people of Artsakh both in 1988 and today.

We urge the authorities of Azerbaijan to demonstrate  political will  in making genuine assessment of the mass atrocities committed in  Sumgait, to refrain from denialism and  to respect the dignity of the  victims and survivors, to genuinely contribute to the preparation of  peoples to peace," Naghdalyan emphasized

To recall, on November 21, during a visit to Sumgayit, the President  of Azerbaijan said that under Heydar Aliyev, the percentage of the  Azerbaijani population in Nagorno-Karabakh increased sharply, doubled  and reached 30 percent. "If Heydar Aliyev had not left for Moscow in  1982 and remained in Azerbaijan, then perhaps the Azerbaijani  population there would have reached 50 percent within 10 years,"  Aliyev said.

The President of Azerbaijan also touched upon the events that took  place in this city in February 1988, when the Armenian pogroms took  place. "The riots in Sumgayit in 1988 were organized by Armenian  nationalists. The Sumgayit events were a provocation of Armenian  nationalists. We must openly say this.  Because for many years  Armenian nationalists have been trying to slander and tarnish the  city of Sumgayit," the President of Azerbaijan said.

To recall, ethnic unrest in the city of Sumgayit in the Azerbaijan  SSR occurred on February 27-29, 1988.  They were accompanied by  massive violence against the Armenian population, robberies,  killings, arson and destruction of property. According to British  journalist Tom de Waal, these events were "the first outbreak of mass  violence in modern Soviet history." The Sumgait pogrom was a landmark  event and a turning point in the aggravation of the ethnic conflict  in Transcaucasia, which caused the first flows of Armenian refugees  from Sumgait to Stepanakert and Armenia. According to the official  data of the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, 26 citizens of Armenian  ethnicity were killed and more than a hundred people were injured in  the riots, while unofficial estimates say that the number of killed  Armenians is hundreds During the clean-up operation, 276 military  personnel received injuries of varying severity. On February 29,  1988, at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee in  Moscow, it was officially recognized that the massacres and killings  in Sumgait were carried out on a national basis, however, as  indicated in the materials of the human rights activist Memorial  Center, the lack of a timely investigation into the circumstances of  the pogroms, the establishment and punishment of those responsible  led to a further escalation of the Karabakh conflict.