3 minute read
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS. The Sumgait pogroms victims were commemorated today in the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan. A wreath was placed at the cross-stone on behalf of the President of Armenia.
MPs, scholars, students, public figures, as well as former residents of Sumgait laid flowers at the monument in honor of the innocent victims.
Holding photos of murdered family members, the former residents of Sumgait were recalling the state-sanctioned Azeri massacres with tears in their eyes.
Karine Melkumyan, a former resident of Sumgait, recalled the horrors she faced in the Azeri town. She said that five family members of hers were murdered during those days. “Today we are commemorating our family members. For three days Armenians were being murdered in Sumgait. Our family was attacked on February 29. They tortured and murdered our family with extreme cruelty. Our entire family resisted the crowd for three hours. Armenians were heroically struggling, trying to save their wives, children and grandchildren. And all of this took place before the eyes of the police and Soviet army,” she said. The ex-resident of the Azeri town are emphasizing that the crime doesn’t have an “expiry date”, and that the Azerbaijani perpetrators should face justice.
Larisa Alaverdyan, executive director of the Against Legal Arbitrariness NGO, mentioned that “we must continue commemorating and demanding justice”.
“Not only should we commemorate our countrymen, but we should also succeed in organizing persecution against all those individuals who are standing next to the Azeri regime and operate under Nazi policy, who speak in Azerbaijan with a vocabulary which has been denied back in the beginning of the 20th century,” she said.
She said that international persecution under international rights must be launched against the perpetrators.
MP Arman Saghatelyan said that one of the main calls is that the Sumgait events haven’t gotten proper legal and political assessment up to this day.
English –translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan