28 February 2025, 21:24
Sumgait riots anniversary highlights continuation of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict
Paying tribute to the memory of the country’s residents who fell victim to the Sumgait pogroms reminds people that they need to overcome hostility and prevent similar events in the future, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Armenia has announced.
The Sumgait pogroms were an ethnic riot in the city of Sumgait in the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) on February 26-29, 1988. According to the information released by the USSR General Prosecutor’s Office, twenty-six Armenians and six Azerbaijanis were killed in the riots, and more than a hundred people were injured.
The crimes in Sumgait marked the beginning of pogroms against Armenians under the patronage of the authorities, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on the 37th anniversary of the pogroms. The Armenian MFA noted that mass killings and torture of Armenians continued in Baku, Kirovabad, and Maragha with horrific cruelty.
“As a result, hundreds of Armenians were killed, and about half a million more were forcibly evicted. The policy of violence had been continuing until September 2023, when the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh was subjected to ethnic cleansing,” the Armenian MFA declared in its statement.
Lawyer Ara Kazaryan believes there are low chances that the victims of the pogroms in Sumgait would be able to bring the organizers of the tragedy to justice through the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), given the time passed since the crime had been committed.
The official Baku believes that the pogroms in Sumgait were organized by terrorist cells run by KGB agents.
This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 28, 2025 at 04:15 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.
Author: Tigran Petrosyan Source: СK correspondent
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