RUSSIAN POLITICAL EXPERT: POGROMS OF THE ARMENIAN POPULATION IN BAKU WERE COMMITTED AT THE STATE LEVEL

ArmInfo
2010-01-20 18:38:00

ArmInfo. Pogroms of the Armenian population in Baku were committed
at the state level. Vladimir Zakharov made such statement in Yerevan
on Tuesday saying that because of indignation of the Azerbaijani
Embassy, he expresses his viewpoint as an independent expert and not
as representative of the Caucasian Research Center of MGIMO (Moscow
State Institute of International Relations).

He said that after tragic events in Sumgait, Azerbaijan, such policy
with regard to the Armenian population had continued for two years.

"However both the Soviet press and Azerbaijani mass media did not
cover those incidents violating human rights and the rights of
the people of specific nationality i.e. the Armenian population of
Azerbaijan. Special gangs were formed in Azerbaijan then. There were
not just one, two or even dozens of such gangs; there were more. All
this was organized at the state level," Zakharov said.

The expert said that the tragic incidents that happened 20 years
ago in Baku are continuation of the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman
Turkey in 1915. This policy is based on the idea of Pan-Turkism,
which has become the ideology of Azerbaijan after the collapse of
the Soviet Union. "This ideology of also in Soviet Azerbaijan, but
it was carefully concealed. It did not start from nothing. Another
matter that we will probably get to know soon who laid the bases of
that movement," the Russian expert said.