Today we pay tribute to the memory of the innocent victims of the Sumgait genocide - one of the most tragic events in the modern history of our people, the Artsakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"As a result of the planned mass pogroms on February 27-29, 1988 in Sumgait, located in the immediate vicinity of the capital of Azerbaijan, dozens of Armenians were killed, hundreds were maimed, tens of thousands were deported. With the criminal connivance of the authorities of Soviet Azerbaijan and the complete inaction of law enforcement agencies, the city of many thousands was given over to the power of armed rioters within three days, who murdered citizens of Armenian nationality with impunity and with particular cruelty.
The Sumgait massacre marked the beginning of a whole series of crimes against humanity committed within the framework of Azerbaijan's state policy towards the Armenian people at all stages of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict. Genocide, systematic ethnic cleansing and massacres carried out by the Azerbaijani authorities in 1988-1991, after the collapse of the USSR, were replaced by war crimes during the armed aggression against the Republic of Artsakh and its people in 1991-1994, 2016 and 2020.
As a result of the genocidal policy pursued by Azerbaijan since 1988, thousands of Armenians were killed, tens of thousands were disabled, hundreds of thousands were forcibly deported and lost their homeland.
Impunity and the lack of an appropriate response from the international community led to increased aggression and an increase in the scale of crimes committed by Azerbaijan against the people of Artsakh. The hateful atmosphere cultivated in Azerbaijani society for years by the Baku authorities has created a situation in which war crimes, including bullying, torture and murder of prisoners of war and civilians, are perceived in Azerbaijan as a norm and an example to follow. Azerbaijan's refusal to return prisoners of war and held captive civilians who were in captivity as a result of the Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression in the fall of 2020 is a vivid example of a criminal policy generated by impunity and permissiveness.
We bow before the memory of the innocent victims of mass crimes and misanthropic policies of Azerbaijan and call on the international community to take effective steps to force the Azerbaijani authorities to abandon the criminal policy and create prerequisites for establishing a stable and long-term peace in the region."
