We Remember the Victims of Sumgait pogrom
STEPANAKERT:
“On February 26-29, 1988, with the actual support of the Azerbaijani authorities and the collusion of the Soviet leadership, a massacre of Armenians was carried out in the city of Sumgait, the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, which shocked the international community with its savagery and brutality,” the Foreign Ministry of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic said in a statement ahead of the 24th anniversary of the crime.
Erik Grigoryan:
“Today, as we mark the 25th year of the grave crime against humanity in Azerbaijan, that killed, raped and tortured hundreds of defenseless Armenians, I remember that one person from Azerbaijan, who was part of a Dialogue program with me, went against the peer pressure and revealed, that her grandmother was about to be killed because she was Russian speaking, like many Armenians, and because they she would not pass the test of saying “funduk” without an russian-Armenian accent, a measure that helped Azerbaijanis to distinguish Armenians to kill them. The story she told was that the mob flooded into the hospital, started testing everyone to find the Armenians. Her grandmother did not pass the test and they wanted to kill her. Her son miraculously convinced them to wait some minutes until he could bring her passport from home, after what she was left to live…”
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