Azerbaijan's 70-year anti-Armenian policy resulted in Sumagit pogroms

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan's 70-year anti-Armenian policy resulted in Sumagit pogroms, political scientist Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.



"The Sumgait atrocities can't even be described as conduct of normal but embittered by propaganda industry people. Judging by the large-scale involvement and silent agreement of the population, it's easy to conclude that the Azeri nation is seriously ill. Meanwhile, the leadership keeps on filling the "syndrome of crowd" into the fevered brain of a Turkic average man," Melik-Shahnazaryan said.



He reminded that in November 1988 a group of young patriots led by Igor Muradyan (one of the founders of the Karabakh committee) requested the committee members to introduce a draft resolution recognizing the Sumgait events as Genocide to the Armenian SSR Supreme Council session. "However, the committee chaired by Levon Ter-Petrosyan was busy with a more important task - democratization of Armenia. The patriots' demands ended in a fight in then-Theater Square on November 4. The Karabakh committee rejected the proposal. November 21, 1988 emerged as the start of mass killings, pogroms and deportation of Armenians from Azerbaijan," he said.



"A crime without punishment entails a recurrence. A crime without condemnation transforms into mass mental disease," he noted.



Sumagit pogroms in February 1988 claimed lives of 32 Armenians. The Armenian population of the town - some 15 thousand people - fled to Armenia. Many of them died in Spitak earthquake on December 7, 1988.