[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 31 (Friday, February 26, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E241-E242]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        A TRIBUTE ON THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SUMGAIT POGROMS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, February 26, 2016

  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the 28th anniversary 
of the pogrom against the Armenian residents of the town of Sumgait, 
Azerbaijan. On this day in 1988, and for three days following, 
Azerbaijani mobs assaulted and killed Armenians. When the violence 
finally subsided, hundreds of Armenian civilians had been brutally 
murdered and injured, women and young girls were raped, and victims 
were tortured and burned alive. Those

[[Page E242]]

that survived the carnage fled their homes and businesses, leaving 
behind everything they had in their desperation.
  The pogroms were not an accident. They were the culmination of years 
of vicious anti-Armenian propaganda, spread by the Azerbaijani 
authorities. The Azerbaijani authorities made little effort to punish 
those responsible, instead attempting to cover up the atrocities in 
Sumgait to this day, as well as denying the role of senior government 
officials in instigating the violence. Unsurprisingly, it was not the 
end of the violence, and was followed by additional attacks, including 
the 1990 pogrom in Baku.
  The Sumgait massacre and the subsequent attacks on ethnic Armenians, 
resulted 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.
  Time has not healed the wounds of those murdered in the pogroms in 
Sumgait, Kirovabad, and Baku. To the contrary, hatred of Armenians is 
celebrated in Azerbaijan, a situation most vividly exemplified by the 
case of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army captain who savagely 
murdered an Armenian army lieutenant, Gurgen Margaryan with an axe 
while he slept. The two were participating in a NATO Partnership for 
Peace exercise at the time in Hungary. In 2012, Safarov was sent home 
to Azerbaijan, purportedly to serve out the remainder of his sentence. 
Instead, he was pardoned, promoted, and paraded through the streets of 
Baku as a returning hero.
  The assault on ethnic Armenian civilians in Sumgait helped touch off 
what would become a direct conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over 
Nagorno Karabakh. And today, Azerbaijan's dangerous behavior on the 
Line of Contact threatens peace and stability in the region. Artillery 
and sniper fire across the Line of Contact has become a fact of daily 
life for civilians in the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, causing numerous 
casualties. I have urged the OSCE Minsk Group to deescalate the 
situation by ending a policy that equates unprovoked attacks by the 
Azerbaijan with the defensive responses of Karabakh and Armenian 
troops, and by pressuring Azerbaijan to accept the installation of 
technological monitoring devices along the border. The anniversary of 
Sumgait is a reminder of the consequences when aggression and hatred is 
allowed to grow unchecked.
  Mr. Speaker, this April we will mark the 101st Anniversary of the 
Armenian Genocide, an event the Turkish government, Azerbaijan's 
closest ally, goes to great lengths to deny. We must not let such 
crimes against humanity go unrecognized, whether they occurred 
yesterday or 28 years ago or 100 years ago. Today, let us pause to 
remember the victims of the atrocities of the Sumgait pogroms. Mr. 
Speaker, it is our moral obligation to condemn crimes of hatred and to 
remember the victims, in hope that history will not be repeated.

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