[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 4, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E293-E294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING THE VICTIMS OF SUMGAIT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 4, 2014

  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the twenty-sixth 
anniversary of the pogrom against people of Armenian descent in the 
town of Sumgait, Azerbaijan, where Armenian civilians were massacred at 
the hands of the Azerbaijani regime. Beginning on February 27, 1988 and 
for three days, Azerbaijani mobs assaulted and killed Armenians. 
Hundreds of Armenians were wounded, women and young girls were brutally 
raped, and many victims of all ages were burnt to death after being 
tortured and beaten. The carnage created thousands of ethnic Armenian 
refugees, who had to leave everything behind to be looted or destroyed, 
including their homes and businesses. The Sumgait Pogroms were part of 
an organized pattern, and were proceeded by a wave of anti-Armenian 
rallies throughout Azerbaijan, which culminated in the 1990 Pogroms in 
Baku.
  These crimes were never adequately prosecuted by Azerbaijan 
authorities. Despite efforts by the Government of Azerbaijan to cover 
up the events which occurred in February 1988, survivors of the pogrom 
have come forward with their stories. They told of enraged mobs, which 
threw refrigerators and furniture, among other belongings from 
apartment balconies and set them afire. Armenians were dragged from 
their apartments. If they tried to run and escape, the mob attacked 
them with metal rods, hatchets and knives before the victims were 
thrown into the fire.
  The Sumgait massacres led to wider reprisals against Azerbaijan's 
ethnic minority, resulting in the virtual disappearance of a once 
thriving population of 450,000 Armenians living in Azerbaijan, and 
culminating in the war launched against the people of Nagorno Karabakh. 
That war resulted in thousands dead on both sides and created over one 
million refugees in both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
  In the years since the fighting ended, the people of Artsakh, the 
region's ancestral name, have struggled to build a functioning 
democratic state in the midst of unremitting hostility and threats from 
Azerbaijan, as well as incursions across the Line of Contact between 
the two sides, such as the recent murder of yet another Armenian 
soldier, Hrant Poghosyan, in an unprovoked attack by Azerbaijani troops 
against Armenian forces. Hatred towards Armenians is both celebrated 
and inculcated in Azeri youth, as exemplified by the case of Ramil 
Safarov, an Azerbaijani army captain who had confessed to the savage 
2004 axe murder of Armenian army lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, while the 
latter slept. At the time, the two were participating in a NATO 
Partnership for Peace exercise in Budapest, Hungary. After the murder, 
Safarov was sentenced to life in prison by a Hungarian court and 
imprisoned in Hungary.
  In 2012, Safarov was sent home to Azerbaijan, purportedly to serve 
out the remainder of his sentence. Instead of serving out his sentence 
in an Azeri jail, he was pardoned, promoted to Major, given back pay 
and paraded through the streets of Baku in a disgusting and 
bloodthirsty welcome home.

[[Page E294]]

  With these appalling acts, the Azeri state reminded the whole world 
why the people of Artsakh must be allowed to determine their own future 
and cannot be allowed to slip into Aliyev's clutches, lest the carnage 
of Sumgait 26 years ago serve as a foreshadowing of a greater 
slaughter. Mr. Speaker, the memory of the victims of Sumgait must not 
be forgotten, and it is our moral obligation to condemn crimes of 
hatred, in hope that history will not be repeated.

                          ____________________