Foreign Ministry: In these days of 1988, hundreds of Armenians were killed in Baku and Maragha, and the cycles of violence persisted until the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement on the 37th anniversary of the massacres in Sumgait. The statement is presented below:

“During these days in 1988, from February 27 to 29, a series of atrocities were carried out in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, which marked the beginning of large-scale massacres against Armenians in that country, openly orchestrated and sponsored by the state, turning decades of pressure and persecution into overt and widespread violence.

The mass murders and torture of citizens of Armenian origin in Sumgait continued with the same patterns and horrifying brutality in Baku, Kirovabad and Maragha. As a result of these events, hundreds of Armenians were killed and around half a million were forcibly displaced. The cycles of violence persisted until as recently as September 2023, when the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh was completely subjected to ethnic cleansing.

As we recall these events, we pay tribute each year to the memory of the innocent victims. At the same time, we believe that these are not merely dates of remembrance but moments to reaffirm the necessity of overcoming enmity to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies in the future.”