"IT WAS BUT GENOCIDE"
Norair Hovsepian
Azat Artsakh, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh
March 5 2007
On February 28 thousands of people visited the Memorial of Stepanakert
to commemorate the victims of the pogroms in Sumgait in February
1988. We met Arthur Babayan there whose family had a narrow escape
from violence in Sumgait. At that time Arthur was 5 but he remembers
the horror of the massacres in Sumgait. "At midnight the Azerbaijani
mob attacked our neighborhood," he said. They left everything and ran
away to their friends who lived in other parts of the town. The next
day they found their apartment robbed and in a mess. This is the story
of thousands of other Armenian families who lived in Sumgait. "They
did not sell tickets to us because our family ended in "yan," Arthur
Babayan said. Fortunately, their family saved.
But many others got killed. "It is genocide, and the world must
recognize it," says Arthur Babayan. The question of the return of
refugees is constantly raised during the talks for the settlement
of the Karabakh issue. "It’s impossible. After what we witnessed
we’ll never return to Azerbaijan," Arthur Babayan said. "The war in
Artsakh was the first step towards fighting injustice our people have
undergone. We must go on by all means," NKR Prime Minister Anushavan
Danielian said to news reporters at the Memorial. Part of refugees
who escaped from Azerbaijan settled down in the capital and have
urgent problems to solve. The government launched last year a program
of aid and apartments to refugees from Sumgait and other places in
Azerbaijan. "This year the first major program will be implemented,"
the prime minister said. The program will include the refugees of not
only the capital but also the regions, he said. However, thousands
of Armenian families displaced from Azerbaijan live in different
countries, which means the first step towards demanding compensation
should be a realistic evaluation of the events of 1988. Sumgait was
the inadequate reaction of Azerbaijan to the righteous claims of
the Armenians of Artsakh, said Masis Mayilian, deputy minister of
foreign affairs of NKR. "People were killed for their ethnicity. The
international law defines such acts as genocide." Masis Mayilian
assured that the NKR foreign ministry is constantly making efforts
to present the reality of the crime to the international community.
However, the fact that the international community fails to give an
adequate evaluation means that there is much more to do.