Armenians Remember Azerbaijan Riot Victims

Armenians Remember Azerbaijan Riot Victims

.c The Associated Press

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) – Hundreds of Armenians, most of them refugees
from neighboring Azerbaijan, marched in Yerevan on Wednesday in memory
of the victims of riots in that country that killed at least two dozen
ethnic Armenians 15 years ago.

Marchers placed wreaths and flowers at the foot of the Armenian
capital’s Monument to the Victims of Genocide.

After the January 1990 rioting in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku, Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev sent troops in to crush an uprising by
Azerbaijani nationalists, and more than 100 people were killed.

The outbreak of violence was one of several clashes linked to the
conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that is in
ethnic Armenian hands after a 1988-1994 war that killed some 30,000
people and drove 1 million others from their homes.

No settlement has been reached over Nagorno-Karabakh, and the
unresolved conflict damages both nations’ economies and raises the
threat of renewed war.

On Tuesday, the Armenian government’s ombudswoman, Larisa Alaverdian,
a Baku native, called for compensation for refugees and deportees from
Azerbaijan and restitution of the property they left behind.

01/19/05 19:22 EST