Sumgait Armenian massacre victims commemorated in Brussels and Hague
The Armenian community in the Netherlands held a protest in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Hague, commemorating the victims of the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait (1988), Kirovabad (1988), Baku (1990), and Operation Ring (1991). They also protested against the continuous aggression against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Armenia. The participants of the protest handed an ultimatum letter to the Embassy of Azerbaijan in the Netherlands, the site of the journal Orer reports.
A similar protest also took place in Brussels on 26 February.
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 by 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. At 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.”