Armenian Assembly of America calls on int’l community to hold Azerbaijan accountable for crimes against humanity

The Armenian Assembly of America has released a statement on the 37th anniversary of the Sumgait pogrom, urging the international community to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its decades of crimes against humanity.

The 1988 Sumgait Pogrom was an Azeri state-sponsored massacre targeting the Armenian population of Sumgait, Azerbaijan. The atrocities then continued in other Azeri cities, killing hundreds of Armenians and forcibly displacing over half a million.

Below is the full statement:

“The Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly) commemorates the 37th anniversary of the Sumgait pogrom, which was a brutally planned and executed massacre against the Armenian population of Sumgait, a coastal city near the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan.

The violence against the peaceful Armenian people was unleashed on February 27, 1988 and continued until March 1, 1988, as the perpetrators - armed with the addresses of Armenian residents - killed, assaulted, critically injured, vandalized and looted during the course of three days. The pogrom was widely reported in mainstream media, however the pattern of state-sponsored violence by Azerbaijan escalated and additional pogroms were committed in Baku, Kirovabad and Maragha in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The anti-Armenian riots were the violent response of Azerbaijanis opposing the Artsakh [NK] Armenian people's legitimate pursuit of self-determination, which was supported by human rights advocates around the globe. The ethnic cleansing against the Armenian people reached its brutal conclusion during Azerbaijan's unjustified attack on Artsakh in September 2020 during the 44-day war, followed by forcibly driving the Armenians of Artsakh from their ancestral lands in September 2023 in the aftermath of a grueling blockade.

As the Armenian Assembly of America commemorates the 37th anniversary of the Sumgait pogrom and the lives lost during all of the pogroms from 1988 to 1990, it condemns Azerbaijan's continued hostility as well as its continued illegal detainment of Armenian prisoners of war, civilians, and government officials. The Assembly urges the international community to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its decades of crimes against humanity, and urges Armenian Americans to contact their U.S. Member of Congress to make a statement on the anti-Armenian pogroms,” the Assembly said in a press release.