YEREVAN. – Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan to pay tribute to the innocent victims of the crime in Sumgait, Azerbaijan (PHOTOS).

On February 27, 1988, mass pogroms of the Armenian population of the city started, and they lasted three days.

The pogroms were accompanied by plunder and destruction of these Armenians' property.

Only three days later, Mikhail Gorbachev, Secretary General of the USSR Communist Party Central Committee, ordered that central bodies intervene and troops enter the city.

The Soviet leadership, ignoring all evidence, categorically refused to classify these mass killings in Sumgait as a crime committed on the grounds of national and religious hatred.

According to official data, 32 Armenians of Sumgait were killed and hundreds suffered severe injuries and became disabled after being tortured and ridiculed.