[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 30 (Monday, February 27, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E248-E249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SUMGAIT POGROMS

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. HOWARD L. BERMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 27, 2012

  Mr. BERMAN. Mr. Speaker, two of the least noticed and most dangerous 
trends of recent years have been Azerbaijan's rapidly growing military 
budget and its increasing bellicosity toward Armenian-populated 
Nagorno-Karabakh. Last June, during Azerbaijan's largest military 
parade since the Soviet era, President Aliyev vowed to avenge the 
deaths of Azerbaijani soldiers killed during the 1988 1994 Nagorno-
Karabakh war and declared that ``the war isn't over yet; only the first 
stage is over.'' He then boasted that Azerbaijan's defense budget is 
twenty times larger than it was just eight years previously and larger, 
in fact, than the entire budget of Armenia.
   Mr. Speaker, it is particularly appropriate that today, February 
27--the anniversary of the 1988 Azerbaijani pogrom directed against its 
own Armenian population in Sumgait--that we commit ourselves to 
stopping these ugly threats. Armenian history is drenched in tragedy. 
Everybody knows about the Armenian Genocide, even if, sadly, only a 
minority of my colleagues has been willing to recognize it officially. 
But fewer know about the hundreds of thousands of Armenians murdered 
under the Ottoman regime in the nineteenth century. And fewer still, it 
seems, know about the pogroms and ethnic cleansing that Armenians 
living in Azerbaijan suffered at the hands of Azerbaijanis as the 
Soviet Union was breaking up.
   The Sumgait pogrom that we recall today lasted three days and 
resulted in the murder of hundreds of Armenian civilians. Other anti-
Armenian pogroms took place in Kirovobad November 21 27, 1988, and in 
the Azerbaijani capital Baku January 13 19, 1990. During this era, 
there were media reports of Armenians being hunted down and killed in 
their homes. The systematic pattern of all these attacks suggested that 
something even more sinister than a mob uprising was at work.
   Mr. Speaker, Azerbaijan seems bent on destroying every last vestige 
of the Armenian presence in Azerbaijan. For example, there is 
videotaped evidence of the Azerbaijani government's December 2005 
systematic desecration and destruction of an ancient Armenian cemetery, 
including thousands of intricately-carved grave-stones in Djulfa, in a 
section of Azerbaijan near the Turkish border. I believe our State 
Department still has not adequately examined this incident, and I call 
on it to do so.
   Today is a solemn day as we recall this history of murder, 
displacement, and destruction, but it is this very history that 
underscores the

[[Page E249]]

importance of self-determination for Nagorno-Karabakh. I call on the 
Administration to press the Azerbaijani government to cease its 
bellicose rhetoric and to stop its headlong rush to war now and to 
adhere strictly to the principled basis of the Minsk Process, namely, 
the search for a peaceful, negotiated solution for Nagorno-Karabakh. I 
likewise call on the Administration to redouble its efforts to achieve 
a solution for Nagorno-Karabakh. And, on this day when we once again 
reflect on the brutality Armenians have suffered, and endured, for 
centuries, I once again call on the Administration simply to 
acknowledge history and to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

                          ____________________