BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 27. The Armenian
Foreign Ministry's allegations against Azerbaijan in its statement
of 27 February on the Sumgayit events are not only unfounded but
also distort and falsify historical facts, said Aykhan Hajizada,
Spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in
response to Armenian Foreign Ministry's commentary on the Sumgayit
events, Trend
reports.
''This statement is an attempt at concealing acts of violence, mass
expulsion of the Azerbaijani population in Armenia, terror against
the Azerbaijani people, provocations, and the use of military force
on ethnic grounds to carry out Armenia's baseless and illegal
territorial claims against Azerbaijan since the late 1980s.
We remind the Armenian Foreign Ministry that the ethnic turmoil in
Sumgayit was an integral part of the purposeful and planned
provocation by the leadership of the USSR and Armenia, Armenian
chauvinistic ideologists, and extremist organizations,'' he
emphasized.
He also pointed out that the USSR prosecutor general's office
opened a criminal case pertaining to the incident, which resulted
in the identification of the rioters along with the
co-conspirators, as well as of the total of 32 victims. The
presence of 6 Azerbaijanis among the victims of the incident
demonstrates that the riots were not perpetrated by
Azerbaijanis.
''We inform the Foreign Ministry of Armenia that the person who
instigated the incidents and led the march, personally killing 6
individuals and raping 3 Armenian women, was an ethnic Armenian
named Eduard Grigoryan. Numerous testimonies from Armenians
residing in Sumgayit corroborate these accounts. Grigoryan,
condemned to 12 years in prison by a court ruling, was moved to
Armenia to serve his sentence and was later released from
prison.
92 persons found guilty in the outcomes of the trial regarding the
events in Sumgayit on 27-29 February 1988, were sentenced to
imprisonment, and 1 person received capital punishment.
For comparison, in the late 1980s, during the forceful deportation
of around 300 thousand individuals from the territories densely
populated by Azerbaijanis in the Armenian SSR, no action was taken
against those responsible for the deaths of over 200
Azerbaijanis.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry is also well aware that none of the
perpetrators of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity
committed by Armenia in various cities and villages, including
Khojaly, during its military aggression against Azerbaijan, have
yet been held legally accountable.
We remind the Armenian Foreign Ministry that the Republic of
Azerbaijan has ended Armenia's decades-long military occupation of
parts of its internationally recognized sovereign territory,
restoring its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Instead of claiming that in 2023 the "ethnic cleansing" was carried
out against Armenians, it would be more beneficial for the Armenian
side to look at the criminal acts committed not only on the
territory of present-day Armenia but also against Azerbaijanis and
Azerbaijan's heritage during the occupation,'' the statement
reads.
Azerbaijan replies to unfounded claims of Armenian MFA
