YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Embassy in Lithuania released a statement on the occasion of the anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians in Baku which was widely covered by the media of the Baltic countries, including ELTA Lithuanian news agency, reports Armenpress.

“This January Armenians commemorate the 28th anniversary of the massacres of the Armenian community of Baku. The anti-Armenian pogroms in Baku lasted almost a week until the Soviet troops entered the city. Many cases of brutalities and murders committed with extreme cruelty were documented. The Human Rights Watch reported of more than 2000 raids on the apartments belonging to Armenians. More than one hundred people were killed during those raids or tortured to death in the streets of Baku. This egregious crime against humanity was condemned by international community, including the European Parliament, which in its resolution, dated January 18, 1990 stated “Having regard to the resumption of anti-Armenian activities by the Azeris in Baku an initial estimate talks of numerous victims, some of whom died in particularly horrific circumstances ... Calls on the Commission and the Council to make representations to the Soviet authorities with a view to ensuring: ... that they guarantee real protection for the Armenian people living in Azerbaijan by sending forces to intervene”. The sad and deplorable outcome of the massacres was the complete ethic cleansing of the Armenian community of Baku, by 1988 numbering around 300 thousand people”, the statement says.

It states that neither the previous nor present leaderships of Azerbaijan condemned or launched any investigation into those events in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.

“In an “Open Letter on Anti-Armenian Pogroms in Soviet Union”, signed by 133 eminent intellectuals and printed in New York Times on September 27, 1990 it is noted that: “The pogroms of Sumgait in February, 1988 were followed by massacres in Kirovapat and Baku in November 1988. As recently as January 1990, the pogroms continued in Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan. The mere fact that these pogroms were repeated and the fact that they followed the same pattern lead us to think that these tragic events are not accidents or spontaneous outbursts.

Rather, we are compelled to recognize that crimes against the Armenian minority have become consistent practice—if not official policy—in Soviet Azerbaijan. According to the late Andrei Sakharov (New York Times, November 26, 1988), these pogroms constitute “a real threat of extermination” to the indigenous Armenian community in Azerbaijan and to people in Nagorno Karabakh whose inhabitants are 80 percent Armenian.” Atrocities against the Armenian community in Baku and those perpetrated earlier in Sumgait and Kirovabad were yet another indication that Armenians had no future either in Soviet or independent Azerbaijan. The realization of the right of self-determination of the people of Nagorno Karabakh had been and continues to be the only guarantee for their existence in their ancestral homeland”, reads the statement.