Armenian Pogroms in Sumgait (February 1988)
Massacres of Armenians in Sumgait (a city located a half an hour drive away from Baku) took place in broad daylight, witnessed by numerous gapers and passers by. The peak of the atrocities committed by Azeri perpetrators occurred on 27 – 29 February 1988. The events were preceded by a wave of anti-Armenian statements and rallies that swept over Azerbaijan in February 1988.
According to deputy chief prosecutor of the Soviet Union Katusev (Izvestia Daily, 20 August 1988), almost the entire area of a city with population of 250 thousand became an site of unhindered mass pogroms. The perpetrators who broke in Armenian households followed lists containing names of those who lived there. They were armed with iron rods (pieces of armature), stones, axes, knives, bottles and canisters full of benzene. As for the quantity of the perpetrators, according to witnesses, some apartments were raided by groups of 50 – 80 persons. Similar crowds (up to 100 people) stormed the streets.
There were dozens of casualties (according to final but still incomplete data, the number of murdered Armenians amounted at least 53 persons), mostly burnt alive after assaults and torture. Hundreds of innocent people wounded and disabled. Many women, including adolescent girls, raped. Over 200 apartments raided, dozens of cars burnt, numerous shops and workshops looted. Thousands of refugees. This is the story of Sumgait that marked the first entry in a long list of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansings of the end of the 20th century.
Armenian Pogroms Were Organised at the State LevelVarious political parties, human rights organisations, social and political celebrities, even parliaments of some countries severely criticised this disgraceful incident and spoke up for protection of Armenians.
European Parliament resolution adopted on 7 July 1988 states:
- Considering, that Nagorno Karabagh was historically a part of Armenia, that currently over 80% of its population are Armenians, that this region was annexed by Azerbaijan in 1923 and that in February 1988 Armenians suffered from a massacre in an Azeri city of Sumgait,
- Considering that aggravation of political situation, having caused mass killings of Armenians in Sumgait and atrocities in Baku, is dangerous for Armenians living in Azerbaijan,
- Condemns brutality and pressure used against Armenian protesters in Azerbaijan.
The pogroms in Sumgait at the end of February 1988 never received an adequate political and legal consideration by the then USSR leadership, and its organisers and key perpetrators evaded punishment and their names never became known to the international community. During the court hearings it turned out, that investigation was subjective and biased. The very fact that the case was broken up into separate independent cases confirmed such bias and aimed to conceal the true organisers and perpetrators. Mass assassination of Armenians was qualified by the court as hooliganism resulting in murder. The materials of the case contain no reference to indolence of the local party and government bodies.
While everything possible was done to conceal and distort the circumstances of the crimes committed in Sumgait, documentary evidence, witness testimonies and other facts collected to date call for a quite straightforward conclusion: the pogrom was organised and carried out by the authorities of the then Soviet Azerbaijan and closely linked mafia and nationalist groups.
George Soros spoke about this in Moscow Znamya Journal (Issue #6, 1989). He actually confirmed that first Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan were instigated by the local mafia managed by the then first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the future President of Azerbaijan Geidar Aliev.
Between 18 October and 18 November 1988, USSR Supreme Court heard one of nineteen cases on crimes in Sumgait in which, according to the verdict, "corroborated hundreds of Azeri nationals." In the course of investigation, numerous witnesses were heard to confirm the extraordinary cruelty of the crimes orchestrated in extremely orderly manner.
Furious mobs threw down from balconies and then burnt furniture, fridges, TV sets, beds. People were dragged out from their apartments, and those who tried to escape were hit with iron rods, knives and axes and then thrown into fire. "He was still moving and tried to get out of fire, but five men pushed him back with iron rods" (witness A. Arkhipov). The police did not interfere. Witness S. Guliev described their reaction to the events: "They were beating a man next to the police precinct. The police left the city at the mercy of the mob. They were nowhere to be seen. I did not see any police around." "The police knew everything," confirmed witness D. Zarbaliev, a son of a police mayor.
According to testimony of Arsen Arakelian, he repeatedly tried to call the police from someone else’ phone (all Armenians’ phones were disconnected), begging them to save his mother Asya who miraculously stayed alive after being beaten and thrown in the fire – the bandits left her thinking she was already dead. The police never came. In court, Arsen also told about malice of ambulance doctors who neither came to help the woman suffering from concussion, broken bones, loss of blood and burns, nor let him bring her inside the hospital.
The army arrived in Sumgait on 29 February. However, it limited itself to shielding against the ravaging mob that threw stones at the soldiers and did little to protect Armenians. Patrols plied close to quarter No. 41a, but never came inside – perpetrators were there. "We are not instructed to go inside", answered soldiers to the victims’ numerous pleas for help (witness S. Guliev).
The organised and planned nature of crimes committed in Sumgait is confirmed by concurrent multi-thousand rallies on 26 – 29 February that called for massacre of Armenians, inconspicuous corroboration of Sumgait authorities and the police, and subsequent participation of the local interior and national security officers in sabotaging investigation and concealing the perpetrators. Corroboration included production of cold weapons (rods, knives, etc.) at factories and workshops of Sumgait, supply of stones to the pogrom venues, blocking the exits from the city, lists of Armenian residents prepared in advance, targeted disconnection of phones by employees of the local phone station, power failures in target quarters during the pogrom days, strict discipline and hierarchy of the mobs that do not conform to the allegedly spontaneous nature of the crimes.
Of particular importance is the fact that right after the pogroms, following an instruction issued, specifically, by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Azerbaijan G. Seidov who headed a government commission arriving in Sumgait on 1 March, and a staff of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Ganifaev, all belongings of Armenian households were quickly removed from the city, entrances of apartment blocks were cleaned, looted apartments and public buildings were hastily refurbished. All material evidence of the crimes was destroyed thus considerably complicating the investigation. Another proof is that bodies of many victims of the pogrom were taken away from Sumgait, to be subsequently discovered in morgues of Baku and other nearby settlements. At a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan of 21 May 1988, the former secretary of Sumgait Committee of the Party D. Muslim-Zadeh accused the central government of Azerbaijan in organising the pogroms. He further elaborated on his accusation at a session of a Bureau of the Central Committee as the issue of his personal responsibility was discussed.
It is quite obvious that events in Sumgait qualify as a genocide planned and organised by Azeri authorities and aimed to deter the entire Armenian community in Azerbaijan by eliminating the Armenians of Sumgait or, as the parlance of the day goes, by ethnically cleansing the city.
Baku, Kirovabad, Nakhichevan… Genocide ContinuesThe policy of masking the genocide in Sumgait and forgiveness of international community helped the organisers and perpetrators avoid criminal liability and caused accelerated pace of follow-up events all over Azerbaijan culminating in January 1990 in Baku where already hundreds of Armenians fell victim to pathological Armenophobia of Azeri nationalists.
In May 1988 in Shushi, the local Communist Party authorities initiated deportation of Armenians of the city. In September of the same year, several Armenians were killed and wounded in Khojali village (Nagorno Karabagh), and last Armenians were ousted out of Shushi. In November - December 1988, Azerbaijan was swept with a wave of Armenian pogroms. The biggest ones took place in Baku, Kirovabad (Ganja), Shemakh, Shamkhor, Mingechaur, Nakhichevan. In Kirovabad, perpetrators broke in a hospice for the elderly, captured and subsequently killed twelve helpless old Armenian men and women, including several disabled ones (Soviet media covered this case). In winter 1988, dozens of Armenian villages in Azerbaijan were deported. The same fate befell more than 40 Armenian settlements of the northern part of Nagorno Karabagh (a territory not included within the borders when the autonomous Republic was formed) in mountainous regions of Khanlar, Dashkesan, Shamkhor and Kedabek provinces including 40-thousand Armenian population of Kirovabad (Ganja). After all these events, with the exception of Nagorno Karabagh Autonomous Oblast, Shahumyan province and 4 villages of Khanlar province (Getashen, Martunashen, Azat and Kamo), Azerbaijan was left with very few Armenians, mostly (50 thousand people) concentrated in Baku. There were about 215 thousand Armenians in Baku in the beginning of 1988.
Throughout 1989, sporadic attacks, beating, massacres and robbery of Armenians in Baku never stopped. No accurate statistics is available and criminal cases were ‘let go’, but it is known for a fact that dozens of Armenians were killed. An outbreak of mass attacks happened in August – September and December 1989. People continued leaving the city and by January 1990, according to some estimates there were only 30 – 35 thousand Armenians, mostly elderly people who could not or did not want to leave, left in Baku.
By 12 – 13 January 1990, Armenian pogroms in Baku intensified and became more organised. On 13 January, after 5 p.m., a crowd of about 50 thousand people leaving a rally at Lenin Square broke into groups and started methodically, house by house, ‘cleaning’ the city from Armenians. Pogroms continued till 15 January. The total number of casualties during the first three days amounted 33 people. However, this figure is by no means final since not all apartments visited by perpetrators were checked (ref. Izvestia Daily, 16 January 1990). On 16 January, 64 cases of attacks on Armenian households were registered. In Leninski district of Baku, 4 unidentified burnt bodies were discovered. (ref. Izvestia Daily, 18 January 1990). On 17 January, 45 attacks were made on Armenian households (ref. Izvestia Daily, 18 January 1990). On one of the central streets – Hagani, hooligans raped a mother and a daughter, 90 and 70 years old, and beat them.
There are numerous testimonies about atrocities and murders committed with extreme cruelty (dissecting bodies, ripping abdomens of pregnant women, burning people alive). One man was literally torn apart, and his remains thrown in a garbage container (ref. Soyuz magazine, 19 May 1990). "They were cutting him in pieces, an Azeri woman told about her Armenian husband, and he shouted "kill me", and I also shouted "Kill him fast", to spare him an agonising death."
The exact number of casualties is not known to date. According to different sources, between 150 and 300 people were killed. The majority of Armenians remaining in Baku were elderly people, and many refugees died shortly after deportation, both because of wounds and not surviving the shock. Pogroms continued till 20 January when army troops were brought to Baku. During the week of 13 – 20 January, the city was fully ‘liberated’ from ‘Armenian elements’ except a couple of hundreds of Armenians from mixed families. After the commencement of military conflict in Nagorno Karabagh, the latter were literally ‘fished out’ for exchange with Azeri POWs.
The sporadic vandalism of the crowd ran parallel with organised logistics of the three life-supporting services of the city, i.e. hospitals, police and utilities. Hospitals never failed to promptly issue death certificates for Armenians who died on those days from ‘hypertension’, ‘diabetes’, ‘cardiovascular failures’. The key lesson of Sumgait events, i.e. availability of too much documentary evidence, was well taken. Such impeccable functioning of healthcare services makes it almost impossible to find out the real number of Armenians killed during Baku pogroms. The police ensured unhindered movement of the crowd, total freedom from responsibility and sympathetic monitoring. According to Armenian witnesses, no case of pogrom took place without involvement of ‘guardians of public order’. Moreover, police vehicles were on the spot to take the most valuable items from abandoned houses, like crystal chandeliers, TV and audio equipment. Shortly after the pogrom, one of the leaders and a board member of Azerbaijan’s Popular Front E. Mamedov told at a press conference: "I personally witnessed murder of two Armenians not far from the railway station. A crowd gathered, they poured fuel on them and burned them. The local police precinct was just 200 meters away, and there were about 400 – 500 privates of the interior forces who drove by the burning bodies. There were no attempts to enclose the area and break the crowd."
The casualties and victims included Russians and representatives of other nationalities. After Armenian pogroms and subsequent clashes between guerrillas of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan and pogrom perpetrators with regular troops, over 100 thousand Russians tens of thousands of Jews, Lezgin and other minority representatives living in Baku left the city for good.
During the days of Baku pogroms, armed groups of the Popular Front and Azeri militia attacked, this time using armoured vehicles, Armenian villages in the north of Nagorno Karabagh - Azat, Kamo, Getashen villages of Khanlar region and Manashid, Erkech and Bouzlukh villages of Shahumyan region. At the same time, the ancient Armenian land of Nakhichevan lost its last Armenian inhabitants.
According to incomplete data of USSR Prosecution, between 1988 and May 1991, 388 Armenians were killed and 302 thousand deported from Nagorno Karabagh and villages on the border with Armenia.
Tragedy of Sumgait and the Azeri StateThe tragedy of Sumgait and its gory replications that took place in Azerbaijan between 1988 – 1991 and culminated in an armed assault against Armenians of Nagorno – Karabagh in 1992 – 1994 is rooted in psychological and historical phenomena that shape the societal climate in Azerbaijan. While the mechanism of pogroms contained elements of purposeful instigation and targeted effort by an external force, the underpinning cause is about anti-Armenian prejudices, phobias and hostility. An explosion of such magnitude and hundreds and thousands of people who took axes to kill their neighbours would need an appropriate environment where psychosis of murder is in the air.
This opinion is confirmed by memoirs of a well-known Azeri writer Um Al Banin (France) who spent her childhood in Baku. They show how impressions of a massacre (Armenian pogroms of 1905 – 1906) affect a child’s feelings. In her book entitled Caucasus Days she offers a description of games played by children of Baku. "On holidays, we would play a game called Armenian massacre, which we preferred over any other game. Overwhelmed with anti-Armenian passions, we would ‘sacrifice’ a girl named Tamar (her mother was Armenian) for the sake of our atavistic hate. We would accuse her of killing Moslems and would immediately ‘gun her down’, over and over again, to extend the pleasure. Then we would tear her apart, cutting her extremities, head, intestines that we threw to the dogs to show our derision of Armenian flesh." Several generations of Azeris, parents and grandparents of our contemporaries, grew up in such spirit. The roots of reciprocal hatred that sprang out in the critical periods of 1918 – 1921 and 1988 – 1991 go back to those days. During the Soviet era, this hatred was stuffed back to the subconscious, to the historical memory. But the deeply rooted causes that instigated the massacre were still there, implicit, but by no means less blatant.
Azeris never repented any of the massacres and cleansings, including those of Armenians of Karabagh. Moreover, according to Ilias Izmailov who was Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General during Sumgait pogroms, "perpetrators of the pogroms now carry MP mandates and sit in Mili Mejlis" (Zerkalo, 21 February 2003).
Today, like [22] years ago, it is obvious that the architects of Azeri state are least of all concerned with ensuring well being of national minorities. This is confirmed by numerous public statements of senior government officials of Azerbaijan, including former presidents Elchibei and Geidar Aliev. The ruling policy of appropriation of values created by generations of Armenians, territorial claims for the large part of historically Armenian lands are but a logical extension of ‘Sumgait way’ that by no means contributes to peaceful coexistence of Azeris and Armenians in common geopolitical space.
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