Wednesday, February 27 2019 13:50

ArmInfo.On February 28, the Assembly of Armenians of Azerbaijan will hold a march in Yerevan in memory of the Armenians who are victims of the genocide in  Azerbaijan. According to the head of the Assembly, Grigory Ayvazian,  the procession starts from Tsitsernakaberd at 12:00, and  representatives of other organizations will also take part in it.

"By this procession we will demonstrate our unity. Yes, we achieved  independence for 120 thousand Armenians of Karabakh, but we should  not forget that we paid for this with genocide, the expulsion of half  a million Armenians from Azerbaijan," Ayvazyan told journalists on  February 27.On February 27-29, 1988, mass pogroms of Armenians took  place in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, during which, according to  official figures, about 30 were killed and hundreds of Armenians were  injured. Sumgait Armenians were killed, burned, raped just because  they were Armenians. Many of the hundreds of wounded have become  disabled. Hundreds of crushed and burned apartments, tens of  thousands of Armenian refugees - the face of Sumgayit at the end of  February 1988.

From the day of the massacre in Sumgait, 31 years have passed,  however, the world has not given a proper assessment to the events in  the city, the very name of which is associated in the mind of any  Armenian with pogroms and murders. Subsequently, the Soviet court  condemned the alleged organizers of the pogroms, however, they all  came to freedom immediately after the collapse of the USSR."At the  epicenter of the massacre - the Sumgait railway station everything  was burning, and not a single Armenian was seen, although it was in  this district that they mostly lived. All Armenians, about 500  people, were in the building of the city committee of the party.  February 28 was the most terrible I arrived in Sumgait on February 29  and I was flooded with photos of women killed in the maternity  hospital, broken heads, people burned alive in their own apartments.  About 60 pictures in total, which I later gave to the refugee  committee in Moscow, "says an eyewitness to those terrible days,  major general with Soviet Army retired Roman Arutyunov.The retired  military man, by virtue of the information available to him, is  convinced that the Azerbaijanis were preparing to massacre the  Armenians of Sumgayit as early as 1987, long before the start of the  Karabakh liberation movement. In particular, her sister Arutyunova  warned everyone living in Sumgayit about this, however, no one gave  meaning to her then. At the same time, according to the general, in  Sumgait, 95 people were killed in the period from February 27 to 29.  All the rest had to flee to Armenia and the rest of the republics of  the Union, leaving all their property.

"After returning from Sumgait, I came to my superiors, General of the  Army Govorov, and told everything I saw. The next day, the  Azerbaijanis wrote a letter to the Minister of Defense demanding to  arrest me for anti-Soviet speeches. Six months later, Govorov wrote a  report about assigning me the title of General Lieutenant. And a  month later I received the answer of the Minister of Defense, Marshal  Yazov: "From now on, I don't have to present an extremist to me."  After that, I and both of my sons retired from the army.  We left,  but remained with a clean tew ", - said the general.