Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) entered the following statement into the Congressional Record:...“Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the 28th anniversary of the pogrom against the Armenian residents of the town of Sumgait, Azerbaijan. On this day in 1988, and for three days following, Azerbaijani mobs assaulted and killed Armenians. When the violence finally subsided, hundreds of Armenian civilians had been brutally murdered and injured, women and young girls were raped, and victims were tortured and burned alive. Those that survived the carnage fled their homes and businesses, leaving behind everything they had in their desperation. “The pogroms were not an accident. They were the culmination of years of vicious anti-Armenian propaganda, spread by the Azerbaijani authorities. The Azerbaijani authorities made little effort to punish those responsible, instead attempting to cover up the atrocities in Sumgait to this day, as well as denying the role of senior government officials in instigating the violence. Unsurprisingly, it was not the end of the violence, and was followed by additional attacks, including the 1990 pogrom in Baku.
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Congressman Adam Schiff
Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) entered
the following statement into the Congressional Record:
“Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the 28th anniversary
of the pogrom against the Armenian residents of the town of Sumgait, Azerbaijan.
On this day in 1988, and for three days following, Azerbaijani mobs assaulted
and killed Armenians. When the violence finally subsided, hundreds of Armenian
civilians had been brutally murdered and injured, women and young girls were
raped, and victims were tortured and burned alive. Those that survived the
carnage fled their homes and businesses, leaving behind everything they had in
their desperation.
“The pogroms were not an accident. They were the
culmination of years of vicious anti-Armenian propaganda, spread by the
Azerbaijani authorities. The Azerbaijani authorities made little effort to
punish those responsible, instead attempting to cover up the atrocities in
Sumgait to this day, as well as denying the role of senior government officials
in instigating the violence. Unsurprisingly, it was not the end of the
violence, and was followed by additional attacks, including the 1990 pogrom in
Baku.
“The Sumgait massacre and the subsequent attacks on
ethnic Armenians, resulted in the virtual disappearance of a once thriving
population of 450,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan, and culminating in the
war launched against the people of Nagorno Karabakh. That war resulted in
thousands dead on both sides and created over one million refugees in both
Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“Time has not healed the wounds of those murdered in the
pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad, and Baku. To the contrary, hatred of Armenians
is celebrated in in Azerbaijan, a situation most vividly exemplified by the
case of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army captain who savagely murdered an
Armenian army lieutenant, Gurgen Margaryan with an axe while he slept. The two
were participating in a NATO Partnership for Peace exercise at the time in
Hungary. In 2012, Safarov was sent home to Azerbaijan, purportedly to serve out
the remainder of his sentence. Instead, he was pardoned, promoted, and paraded
through the streets of Baku as a returning hero.
“The assault on ethnic Armenian civilians in Sumgait
helped touch off what would become a direct conflict between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karbakh. And today, Azerbaijan’s dangerous behavior on
the Line of Contact threatens peace and stability in the region. Artillery and
sniper fire across the Line of Contact has become a fact of daily life for
civilians in the Nagorno Karbakh Republic, causing numerous casualties. I have
urged the OSCE Minsk Group to deescalate the situation by ending a policy that
equates unprovoked attacks by the Azerbaijan with the defensive responses of
Karbakh and Armenian troops, and by pressuring Azerbaijan to accept the
installation of technological monitoring devices along the border. The
anniversary of Sumgait is a reminder of the consequences when aggression and
hatred is allowed to grow unchecked.
“Mr. Speaker, this April we will mark the 101st
Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, an event the Turkish government,
Azerbaijan’s closest ally, goes to great lengths to deny. We must not let such
crimes against humanity go unrecognized, whether they occurred yesterday or 28
years ago or 100 years ago. Today, let us pause to remember the victims of the
atrocities of the Sumgait pogroms. Mr. Speaker, it is our moral obligation to
condemn crimes of hatred and to remember the victims, in hope that history will
not be repeated.”
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