ArmInfo.A regular meeting of the Armenian government started on February 28 with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the Sumgait pogroms.

As Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan noted in his speech, exactly  31 years ago, violence began in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait  against local Armenians, after which the pogroms spread to Baku,  Kirovabad and other settlements of Azerbaijan. "Events in Sumgait  became a clear example of when on ethnic and racial grounds our  compatriots became the target of those atrocities.

Such events are not uncommon for us, and we have learned the lessons  of history. I propose to honor the memory of those killed in those  events with a minute of silence, " the Deputy Prime Minister said.

To recall, riots on ethnic grounds in the city of Sumgait, Azerbaijan  SSR occurred on February 27-29, 1988. They were accompanied by mass  violence against the Armenian population, robbery, murder, arson and  destruction of property. According to the words of the British  journalist Tom de Waal, these events became "the first outbreak of  mass violence in modern Soviet history." According to official data  of the Prosecutor General's Office of the USSR, 26 citizens of  Armenian nationality died in the course of the riots, more than a  hundred people were injured. According to unofficial estimates,  hundreds of Armenians were killed. During an operation to restore  order, injuries of varying degrees of severity were received by 276  military personnel. However, according to the data of the Memorial  Human Rights Center, the lack of timely investigation of the  circumstances of the pogroms, the identification and punishment of  the perpetrators led to a further escalation of the Karabakh  conflict.