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Yesterday, in one of the halls of the National Assembly of France a conference titled “25 years after the Sumgait events: present situation and future prospects for the people of Nagorno-Karabakh” was held. The conference was marred by the Azerbaijani provocation.

At the end, the attendees stood to honor the memory of the victims killed during Sumgait pogroms and kept a minute's silence. Two Azerbaijani provocateurs, a girl and a young man, refused to stand up and to honor the Armenian victims in Azerbaijan and started to shout anti-Armenian slogans.

On the photos, published in “Nouvelles d'Armenie”, it is obvious how the Azerbaijani tries to provoke a fight and attacks the audience. Azeri press disseminated false information about beating and causing serious injuries, right up to fracturing, to provocateurs. In the photos, published in the same Azerbaijani media, it is clearly visible that there is no serious damage caused to both. Moreover, participants of the provocation give contradicting evidence about the incident: at first they say the girl was beaten together with the guy, then they say she managed to leave the room.

Guard of the National Assembly took away the provocateurs. It is also noteworthy that a moment later the employees of the Azerbaijani embassy in Paris, headed by the Ambassador were at the place of the incident which speaks of the pre-planned provocation.

Meanwhile, the Hay Dat French Bureau says: “We are dealing with unacceptable provocation, which is aimed at disrupting the demonstration, planned for February 28 at the Embassy of Azerbaijan. We are intended to file a complaint against the instigators.”
On 26-29 February 1988 in terms of actual complicity of local authorities and inaction of the USSR government mass pogroms of civilians were organized in Sumgait city of Azerbaijani SSR, accompanied with unprecedented brutal murders, violence and pillaging against the Armenian population of the city. Armenian pogroms in Sumgait were carefully organized. At the meetings, which began on February 26 in the central square, city leaders openly called for violence against the Armenians.

On February 27 protests which were attended by hundreds of rioters turned into violence. Armed with axes, knives, specially sharpened rebar, rocks and cans of gasoline and with the pre-compiled lists of apartments where Armenians lived the rioters broke into the houses, turning everything upside down there and killing the owners. In the same time, people were often taken out to the streets or to the courtyard for jeering at them publicly. After painful humiliations and torture the victims were doused with gasoline and burnt alive.

On February 29 army troops entered Sumgait but without an order to intervene. Only in the evening, when the mad crowd began to attack the soldiers the military units took up decisive steps.

The exact number of victims of Sumgait pogroms is still unknown. According to official data, 32 people were killed; however there is ample evidence that several hundred Armenians have been killed in the city in three days. There is also evidence that the riots were coordinated by KGB in Azerbaijan. Executioners of Sumgait were subsequently declared as national heroes of Azerbaijan.

Documentary “Ordinary Genocide: Sumgait 1988”