The modern-day slaughter of Armenians by Azerbaijan went unpunished beginning with the systematic pogroms of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait in 1988.
In response to democratic calls by the people of Artsakh to unify with Armenia, sparking the Artsakh Liberation Movement, Soviet Azerbaijani special forces began to round up Armenians in the city of Sumgait on February 27, 1988.
This was the beginning of a terror campaign. Similar pogroms were perpetrated in Kirovabad, Baku, Maraga, Shahumyan, Getashen and other regions of Azerbaijan. None of these attacks were condemned or punished, thus giving Azerbaijan the impunity to continue its aggression against Armenia and Artsakh, which culminated in the brutal 2020 war and the attack last fall on Artsakh that forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of Artsakh Armenians.
In 2024, 36 years after the planned pogroms, the United States and the European Union representatives in Yerevan issued brief statements “mourning” the victims of the pogroms — more than three decades too late.
Armenia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said the the impunity gave Azerbaijan the green light to ethnically cleanse Artsakh of its Armenian population, adding that Azerbaijan is continuing its policy of “erasing any trace of Armenians.”
Below is the statement.
On February 27, 1988, at the initiative and with the full support of the leadership of Soviet Azerbaijan, massacres of the Armenian population of Sumgait commenced, accompanied by cases of violence, brutality, enforced disappearances, deprivation of property, and massive violations of human rights. Hundreds were killed, including women, children and elderly, thousands were forcibly displaced.
The Sumgait tragedy was followed by massacres of Armenians in Kirovabad, Baku and other Armenian-populated settlements of Azerbaijan. This chain of events, as well as the complete annihilation of Armenians from Nakhichevan earlier, showed that the mentioned crimes were not separate episodes of violence based on national identity but regular manifestations of a state-orchestrated and state-led policy of Armenophobia. This policy resulted in forcible displacement of about 500,000 ethnic Armenians from Soviet Azerbaijan.
It is worth noting that these events targeted not only the Armenian population: they were also accompanied by deliberate actions to destroy the Armenian heritage and to erase the Armenian trace in general.
Already in the 21st century, under the conditions of complete impunity, Azerbaijan continued the same policy of ethnic cleansing by terrorizing the native Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhumane siege, starving them to death and finally depopulating Nagorno-Karabakh through the use of force: ethnic cleansing was completed even in spite of the three legally binding decisions of the UN International Court of Justice.
Today, as well, Azerbaijan continues the policy aimed at erasing the Armenian trace in the territories under its control, desecrating, vandalizing and destroying Armenian religious and historical and cultural monuments. Today as well, the continuing xenophobic and hostile policy towards the Republic of Armenia is accompanied by hate speech, threats and aggressive rhetoric at the highest level, which is an obstacle in the path of overcoming hostility between nations and establishment of peace and stability in the region.
The international community must give an adequate assessment of the committed mass crimes and use all available mechanisms to prevent the recurrence of such crimes and to contribute to the genuine efforts of Armenia to achieve a dignified and lasting peace in the South Caucasus.”
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