Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan has posted the following on his Facebook page:

"In January 1990, the Armenian population in the capital of Azerbaijan Baku has been subjected to a systematic and mass pogrom.

The massacres in Kirovabad, Sumgait and Baku became a part of the Azerbaijani state Armenophobia and policy of ethnic cleansing. This anti-Armenian policy continued also during the Second Artsakh War, accompanied by numerous terrible crimes committed against the peaceful population of Artsakh.

Regardless of this most complicated situation and received blows, the Armenians around the world are determined to continue living and creating in their homeland and suspending all threats of committing genocide against the Armenian people. In our homeland, there is no alternative than to take into consideration the right to our living, cannot simply exist.

More accurate, than William Saroyan has formulated, I believe is not possible to say:

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered.

Go ahead, destroy this race.  Let us say that it is again 1915.  There is war in the world.  Destroy Armenia.  See if you can do it.  Send them from their homes into the desert.  Let them have neither bread nor water.  Burn their houses and their churches.  See if they will not live again.  See if they will not laugh again.  See if the race will not live again when two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years after, and laugh, and speak in their tongue.  Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it.  See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world, you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world, go ahead and try to destroy them.”