At the end of February 2018, the 30th anniversary of the bloody events in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait is marked. Since then, the word “Sumgait” has become an appellative word. It became synonymous with barbarism and obscurantism. That days, under the direct leadership of the Azerbaijani authorities, with the criminal connivance of the party and Soviet authorities in Moscow, was committed the first in the USSR monstrous on cruelty and mass crime on the basis of ethnic hatred.
The executioners, organizers and accomplices of this crime, whose victims were hundreds of citizens of Armenian nationality, did not suffer any punishment for what they had done. After Sumgait in 1988-1990 there were relapses of similar very real hell in Baku, in Kirovabad and other cities and regions of Azerbaijan, and also in 1992 in the Karabakh village of Maraga.
More than half a million Armenian civilians, the state-forming nation in Azerbaijan, became exiles from places where their ancestors lived for centuries. Among the numerous killed, wounded and exiled were Armenians, whose age exceeded the age of the artificially created in 1918, the second Turkish state – called Azerbaijan.
Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage called it “gross violations of order”, “riots”, “hooliganism,” “events in and around Karabakh.” However, the carefully planned character of the crimes, the same handwriting as during the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, the animal nature of the atrocities do not allow calling this “pogroms”. After 30 years, rethinking what has happened, it is necessary to stop the immoral games in political correctness and to give a true qualification to the terrible crimes of these nonhumans in Azerbaijan.
Based on the irrefutable facts of historians and eyewitnesses of the crimes of Azerbaijan against the Armenian people from 1918 to 1992, based on numerous publications of scientists, lawyers, public figures (Appendix),
Paying tribute to the memory of innocent Armenians, who became victims of these crimes by Azerbaijan,
Considering these bloody crimes and genocide policy of the tandem of the two Turkish states (Turkey and Azerbaijan) – as a single process based on the national chauvinist racist ideology Pan-Turkism — one of the dangerous forms of the hatred ideology that harms the various peoples, including the peoples of Azerbaijan and Turkey,
we hereby state that:
— affirm that the aforementioned crimes, together with the continuous genocidal anti-Armenian policy of Azerbaijan in various forms continuing today, fully and unconditionally correspond to the legal formulation of the crime of genocide established by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948,
— note that the media, Internet resources, organizations of different countries that directly or indirectly ignore the truth, support, justify or replicate the genocidal policy, contribute to the distortion of history and reality, are in essence accomplices and allies of the above mentioned and continuing criminal processes,
— call upon international organizations, state and public structures, public figures and media from different countries to provide an adequate legal assessment of the repeated genocidal acts, the continuous and ongoing genocidal policy of Azerbaijan.
February 27, 2018
This statement was signed by 11 members of Coordinating Council and 23 Armeniam NGOs in Russia
Coordinating Council of Russian-Armenian Organizations
Armenian Comradeship. group “ArmPeterburg” in Facebook
Armenian cultural educational society “Ararat”
Armenian national cultutal autonomy of city Zelenograd
Association of lawyers “ArmRoss”
NGO @Children’s physical education and educational association “Leader”
Journal “Sobesednik Armenii” (Interlocutor of Armenia)
Moscow Society of Western Armenians
Cultural educational center HAYASA
International Armenian Cossack Association (MAKO)
Creative Center “ARAKS”
Center for support of Russian-Armenian strategic and public initiatives
Statement was also joined by:
NGO “Dialog”
Information center “Yerkramas”
Internet portal “Nasha Sreda” (Our environment)
Society of Armenians from Nakhidjevan
Internet portal Armenia-online
Internet portal ArmBook
International movement “New Armenia”
International organization for the development of Armenian classical music
Moscow regional NGO “Russian society of friendship and cooperation with Armenia”
Moscow regional NGO “Masis”
Non-commercial partnership RusArmInfoCenter “Nasledie” (Heritage)
NGO “Armenians of Ardvin”
NGO “Amshen diaspora of Russia”
Regional NGO “Moscow Armenian community”
Regional NGO “Armenian national cultural autonomy of the city of Moscow”
Regional NGO “Society of Russian-Artsakh friendship”
Society of young professionals – SIVAM
NGO “Narodnaya pamyat” (People memory) of city Sotchi
Regional Armenian NGO “Mashtots” in Pskov
Representative of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Republic of Artsakh) in Russia
Center for ethno-political researches
Foundation for the restoration of monuments of the Great Patriotic War named after the Hero of the Soviet Union Unan Avetisyan
“Spitak memorial” foundation
Same in Russian:
Armenian Comradeship and group in Facebook “ArmPeterburg”
Center for support of Russian-Armenian strategic and public initiatives
http://russia-artsakh.ru/node/30