The RA Foreign Ministry has stated on the 37th anniversary of the massacres in Sumgait.
“On these days of 1988, on February 27-29, a series of crimes were committed in the city of Sumgait, Azerbaijan, which marked the beginning of large-scale massacres against Armenians in that country with the undisguised state sponsorship and direction, turning decades of oppression and persecution into open and mass violence.
The mass murders and torture of citizens of Armenian origin in Sumgait continued in Baku, Kirovabad, and Maragha with the same regularities and horrific cruelty. As a result of these events, hundreds of Armenians were killed, and about half a million Armenians were forcibly displaced.
The cycles of the policy of violence continued until September 2023, when the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh was completely ethnically cleansed.
We pay tribute to the memory of their innocent victims every year by recalling these events. At the same time, we believe that these events are not just dates of commemoration but moments to appreciate the need to overcome hostility in order to exclude its recurrence in the future,” the statement said.
