YEREVAN. – The Azerbaijanis are telling tales about the events that occurred in Khojaly, Azerbaijan, on February 25–26, 1992. These tales were invented to cover up the crimes they had committed against the Armenians in Sumgait and Baku, Chairman Grigori Ayvazyan of the Assembly of Azerbaijan Armenians stated during a press conference on Tuesday.          

According to him, the Armenians themselves should confess that the Armenian pogroms in the City of Sumgait were genocide, too. 

“Armenia should formally recognize the genocide of the Armenians in Azerbaijan,” Ayvazyan added.

In his view, the primary shortfall of the Armenian policy in the past 25 yeas is that the pogroms in Sumgait were discussed by numerous people, but no one asked the Azerbaijan Armenians’ respective viewpoint.    

“This is [the case] at a time when the Karabakh conflict solutions that are advantageous for the Armenian party are in our hands. It is us [Azerbaijan Armenians] who are well aware of Azerbaijan’s weaknesses,” chairman of the Assembly of Azerbaijan Armenians concluded.     

To note, large-scale pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait were carried out from February 27 to 29, 1988 and, as a result, thirty people were brutally killed and hundreds were injured.     

Photo by Arsen Sargsyan/NEWS.am