Pogroms: Sumgait, Gandzak, Baku, Ring Operation, Maragha

Sumgait (Sumgayit, Soumgayit)

The civilized demonstrations in Artsakh and Armenia in protest to seven decades of tyranny under illegal “Azeri” rule were answered in full Turkish tradition. The first Turkish artistic outburst in an endless series after the 1988 rallies was produced in Sumgait, an industrial city built mainly by Armenian efforts, north of and not far from Baku, in February 1988.

During three consecutive days starting February 27 thousands of Armenian residents of the town went through hell when the “Azeri” bashi-bozuks armed with rods, bats, axes, knives, bottles and fuel cans, unhampered and in broad daylight, broke into the previously identified houses and apartments of Armenians.

The hysterical mob attacked helpless people, beat up, raped, tortured and burnt them alive. More than 200 apartments, many shops and cars were ransacked and destroyed.

The whole genocidal act was carefully planned, executed and the mess was quickly cleaned up. The militia did not move a finger to stop the thugs and even helped them in some cases. Despite the cover-up every point presented below has been confirmed by numerous eyewitnesses.

The planned nature of the affaire can be deduced from the facts that the Armenian employees were sent home so that the employers could wash their hands of any damage to the Armenians in the workplace. Telephone lines of the apartments where Armenians lived were disconnected during the horror. Appeals for help fell on deaf ears or the advice was: “stay at home” so that the homicidal barbarians would arrive and commit the gruesome acts Turks are best at. Roads to Sumgait were blocked by the military that checked every car. To determine the Armenians their accent was checked, men were forcibly controlled to see whether they were circumcised and the Armenian passengers were shot on the spot.

After the genocidal act, the apartments were restored by the town municipality before any “investigation team” arrived at the scene. Even after their arrival no effort was spared to conceal the identities of the perpetrators, nor were the Soviet authorities really interested in punishing the thugs and dismissed the monstrosity as a series of unrelated criminal acts. It was Gorbachev who had refused the plea of the Armenians for the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia after all. Stronger still, the barbarity could not have been done without the blessing of Moscow, to send a signal to the Armenians and remind them that half a million of them lived in fake “Azerbaijan” and they could be hurt if they did not stop the protests in Artsakh and ArmSSR.

Since the whole thing happened in “Azeri” territory, the number of victims was reduced to 27 dead and 12 cases of rape, while it is known that hundreds were severely injured and disabled and about 18,000 Armenian residents of the town with a population of 250,000 became refugees. As usual, the Turkish savagery was ignored and the impunity paved the road for further acts of genocide without the fear of accountability.

Sumgait Testimonies

London Times, 12-March-1988 Christopher Walker, Times’ correspondent in Moscow

A Muslim mob broke into a maternity ward in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait during ethnic rioting, disemboweled pregnant Armenian women and killed babies, according to a chilling account of the recent violence provided by the first independent witness to return from the city, now under military curfew and closed to foreigners. Andrei Shilkov, an editor of the Soviet underground journal Glasnost, yesterday painted a horrific picture of atrocities he alleged had taken place in the city late last month.

While KGB agents monitored his flat, Mr. Shilkov, aged 36, told newsmen inside that he had been informed by different residents, including Russians with no particular ethnic axe to grind, that Armenians had been flung into the streets by rampaging mobs of Azerbaijanis.

The worst single incident in the violence on February 28 and 29 is said to have occurred in a maternity hospital. Mr. Shilkov quoted an account provided to him by an Azerbaijani nurse who had been working there but who had now left the city in disgust at the events which she witnessed.

“The killers broke into the maternity hospital and doctors were made at knifepoint to show them where the Armenian women were lying,” Mr. Shilkov told the shocked correspondents. “They disemboweled them all in a bloodbath. The new babies were held by the legs and swung and smashed against the wall and then thrown out of the windows.”

…“I spoke with an Azerbaijani woman whose upstairs neighbors were Armenians”. She saw the mob throw the Armenian daughter, a young girl, out of the window. When they realized that she was not dead, they threw a heavy wardrobe down on top of her to kill her.

D. Zarbaliyev son of an Interior ministry official testified: “The militia knew everything”.

Andrei Sakharov: “No half measures, no talks about friendship of peoples can calm down the people. If someone doubted this before Sumgait, then after this tragedy no one has the moral right to insist on maintaining NKAO under the territorial jurisdiction of Azerbaijan”.

Gandzak (Ganja, Gianja, Kirovabad (Soviet naming))

Gandzak, a city in the historic Armenian province of Utik, is situated on the banks of the River Kur. The “Azeri” part of the city is on the left bank of the river where according to the common discriminatory policy in Soviet times all the strategically crucial constructions including the airport, industrial and administrative buildings and department stores were built. Just like everywhere else this was aimed at driving the Armenians who used to live on the right bank of the river, out of their homeland, a goal which they achieved more rapidly by perpetrating genocide and war using the pretext of Armenian peaceful protests.

The quick growth rate of Turks had changed the demographic makeup of Gandzak to their benefit as well where from the total population of 280,000 in 1988, at least 40,000 and according to different sources up to one third of the total were Armenians.

While their bloodthirsty siblings were quenching their unquenchable thirst for Armenian blood in Sumgait, hundreds of man-shaped wolves under protection of the militia officers invaded the Armenian sector of the town, smashed doors and windows of Armenian houses and molested Armenians in the streets.

Again just like in the case of Sumgait lists of addresses of Armenian were being prepared by the authorities and a cross was drawn on houses where Armenians lived.

On 21st of November, 1988 “Azeri” students (mind you!) started a scientific excursion in the form of a rally in Lenin Square early in the morning, attracting more genocidal bugs of the same species until noon. Hate speeches were delivered by extermination experts to heighten the instinctively violent senses of the two legged beasts of prey and after the intellectual ingestion the crowd armed with rods and stones started the practical part of the workshop in the afternoon.

The Turkic merry making began as they hit the Armenian part of the town. To ensure the progenitors of the “students” that no harm could befall their loved ones, they had the kind company of the militia. In the manner of their ancestors they razed everything to the ground.

The thugs met some resistance and the following days saw more of the same: curfew was announced, Armenians fleeing the “Azeri” part of Gandzak arrived, Armenian monuments were destroyed, the church was desecrated, Armenian patients, notwithstanding how serious their condition, were thrown out of hospitals, all Armenian employees were dismissed, banks refused to serve them, travel agencies refused to sell tickets to them and tore their passports, telephone lines were disconnected, gas and water supplies and transport were suspended in the Armenian sector; in a word, for a whole week the usual Turkish behavior was displayed in full colors with the following official statistics as the icing on the Turkish baklava:

18 murdered; 11 Raped; 60 missing; 74 severely injured; 4500 refugees; 1376 ransacked apartments; 20 stolen and 24 burnt vehicles, all this for what?

All the evidence concerning the assaults, photos of the criminals, testimonies which were passed to the commandant’s office disappeared “mysteriously” and the Soviet authorities refused to help the Armenians, rather decision was taken to drive them out of Gandzak. Most of their houses were usurped by “Azeri” plunderers and some sold theirs at ridiculously low prices.

The unjust delineation of the boundaries of Artsakh under Soviet “Azerbaijan” had left many Armenian populated districts out of the NKAO (the so-called Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast). Those, as well as the 40,000 Gandzak Armenians were forced out of their homes using the brutal methods described above.

But the atrocities did not stop there. 215,000 Armenians were still living in Baku who also had to leave so that “no Armenians were left in Baku anymore” to endanger the business of the greedy international oil corporations.

Baku

The impunity of the Sumgait and Gandzak bestialities and the tacit support of the conniving champions of “Human Rights” and “Democracy” encouraged the already ferocious Turk to do to Armenians, with more gusto, what they have been doing since the ill day they appeared in the region.

During the winter months of 1988 Armenian populated rural areas throughout fake “Azerbaijan” were being ethnically “cleansed”. The aggression against Armenian civilians had already forced most of the Armenians out of Baku.

The state organized pogroms against the Armenians of Baku started on January 12, 1990. The following day a huge rally was held in Lenin Square. The eerie name of this monster, who in a wild orgy with Kemal had offered 60% of the recognized Republic of Armenia to the Turks in 1921, making him the real responsible for all these savageries, comes up yet again. The mob counting tens of thousands parted in different directions and the customary Turkish barbarity began. 33 were brutally slaughtered, mutilated, pregnant women disemboweled and burnt in the first three days of the massacres according to January 16, 1990 issue of Izvestia. Massacres went on until January 20th, with an estimated death toll from 150 to 300.

The Armenian husband of an “Azeri” woman was hacked into pieces: “he was crying “Kill me”; I was tied up and could only cry “Kill him.” I asked them to kill my husband to rid him of his painful death” she testified.

A leader of the Azerbaijani People’s Front E. Mamedov said at a press-conference in Moscow: “I personally witnessed the murder of two Armenians near the railway station. The crowd poured petrol on them and burnt them alive. It was about 200 meters far from the regional Militia Department. There were about 400-500 soldiers of interior forces, but no one tried to put cordons around the region and disperse the crowd”.

The Ring Operation

The plan for grabbing Shahoomian (Shahumian, Shaumian also written with y instead of i) was made in early 1991. The “Azeris” distributed leaflets shamelessly demanding the territory from the Armenians who were openly told to leave.

The population of 24 Armenian villages of Artsakh was deported starting from April 30, 1991 with the help of USSR army breaking into Martunashen and Getashen using tanks and helicopters.

In the spring of 1990 “Azeris” would coerce the inhabitants of Armenian villages into selling their houses changing the demographic picture of the region. Later, end August, the “Azeri” deputy minister of the interior ordered the people of Getashen to leave, whereby they passed an illegal resolution to consider Getashen part of Khanlar.

January 13, 1990, 17.000 Azeris attacked the villages of Kamo, Azat and Kushchi Armavir.

January 14, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan decided on the unification of the Armenian-populated Shahoomian and the “Azeri”-populated Kasum-Ismailovsky into one region called Goranboy to force the Armenians out. At that time, at least 82% of the 20,000 population in Shahoomian were Armenians.

April 16 Mutalibov proposed the deportation of the population of Getashen and Martunashen.

April 23 Getashen and Martunashen were under siege by the Internal Forces of the USSR and the Russian Army followed by proposals to Armenians to sell the territory on April 28 and the whole region came under fire of helicopters and tanks and the attack of “Azeri” OMON (special task units of the militia) on April 29 and 30, massacring civilians. The criminal operation went on until early June.

The expulsion of the Armenians from these 24 villages in Artsakh was confirmed among others by testimonies of the representatives of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan, N. Talibov.

The decision to set up an armed resistance against “Azeri” aggression was taken on June 19, 1991 by the Nagorno Karabakh Executive Committee of the Regional Council.

Maragha

The jewel on the crown of “Azeri” bestiality must be the senseless mutilation of Armenian inhabitants of Maragha, a village in the Martakert region of Artsakh. The village was later united with Margoushevan and called Leninavan which had a population of 4,110 in early 1989.

The “Azeri” army attacked and reduced Maragha to ashes on April 10, 1992 massacring, dismembering and burning more than 100 innocent villagers. 45 civilians including 9 children and 29 women were taken hostage. A later attack added to the casualties where 30 women and 20 elderly were among the slain.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords of the British Parliament, Baroness Caroline Cox testifies:

“On April 10, 1992, forces from Azerbaijan attacked the Armenian village of Maraghar in northeastern Karabakh. The villagers awoke at 7 a.m. to the sound of heavy shelling; then tanks rolled in, followed by infantry and civilians with pick-up trucks to take home the pickings of the looting they knew would follow the eviction of the villagers. Azeri soldiers sawed off the heads of 45 villagers, burnt others, took 100 women and children away as hostages, looted and set fire to all the homes, and left with all the pickings from the looting. I, along with my team from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, arrived within hours to find homes still smoldering, decapitated corpses, charred human remains, and survivors in shock. This was truly like a contemporary Golgotha many times over.”

The fact that in response to all these atrocities no reprisals against the “Azeris” took place anywhere throughout the Republic of Armenia speaks for the Armenian patience and humanity, making the disgusting Khojaly lie even more cynically repulsive.

While the wolves have this sole fabricated incident in their fraudulent pack of whining cards plus the western media to amplify the hoax behind them, let it be known that besides Sumgait, Baku, Gandzak, Shahoomian, Getashen, Martunashen, Maragha and Shushi, pogroms were perpetrated in the Armenian towns and villages of Hadrut: Jraberd (Agbulag), Karing (Arpagyadouk), Banazur, Karmrakar (Binyatlu), Sarelanch (Jilan), Arevshat (Dolanlar), Myulkyudara, Petrosashen, Spitakashen, Tzamdzor, Dzor, Khandzadzor (Agjakend) Arakel; further in Voskepar, Karintak, Karachinar, Buzluk, Horek (Talish), Manashid, Nidj, Berdadzor, Hinshen, Tas-Verst (Tzakhkadzor), Khandzk, Hin-Tagher, Kichan, Kajavan, Karaglukh, Togh, Shurnukh and in the last surviving Armenian village in occupied Nakhijevan by 1989, Znaberd (Aznabyurt) as well as in Shamkhor, Shamakhi, Sheki, Zakatali, Chardakhli, Mingechaur and everywhere else throughout fake “Azerbaijan” where Armenians lived.