Nagorno-Karabakh commemorates victims of Sumgait pogroms

A mourning ceremony dedicated to the 22nd anniversary of Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait took place today in Nagorno-Karabakh.

On February 27-29, 1988, a couple of days after the decision of the Regional Soviet of People's Deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAR) to address leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and USSR with a request to remove the NKAR from the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) into the Armenian SSR, pogroms of the Armenian population burst out in the city of Sumgait. According to official data, 32 Armenians were lost and hundreds more were wounded. 14,000 Armenians - residents of Sumgait - left the city within several days.

Power officials and public figures of Nagorno-Karabakh, headed by President Bako Saakyan, visited the memorial complex in Stepanakert and laid flowers to the monument to the victims of the tragedy.

The press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh has disseminated a statement running: "Unfortunately, the pogroms, organized and realized in Sumgait on February 27-29 at the highest state level, have not received any adequate political and legal assessment. The official bodies of the USSR hastened to taboo the 'Sumgait topic' by artificially splitting the massacre of Armenians into separate crimes. In other words, the actual genocide was veiled," the document runs.