ArmInfo. Member of the ruling party of Italy "Lega", member of the Italian parliament, representative of the Armenian-Italian inter-parliamentary commission on cooperation Giulio Centemo made a speech about the Sumgait pogroms in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament."I would like to make a speech in this hall and mention one of the most tragic pages of modern history - the massacres of Armenians that took place 31 years ago in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.
In February 1988, in response to peaceful demonstrations of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh for the realization of the right to self-determination, the authorities of Azerbaijan organized the violent suppression of the actions of the Armenian population of Baku, Sumgayit and Kirovabad. It all started from Sumgayit, where for three days, with obvious support and with the permission of the Azerbaijani authorities, A lot of Armenians were killed, and one reason is their ethnicity. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forced to leave their homes, their cities. In those days, one of the most fundamental human rights was violated - the right to life, "the Italian deputy said, reminding that Sumgait massacres.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution in which the incident was qualified as the destruction of the people as such.According to Centemer, it is important to emphasize the fact that the Karabakh conflict is not a territorial dispute, but a question of the physical existence of people living in this territory. "Unfortunately, 30 years later we are witnessing anti-Armenian rhetoric and real hate propaganda from Azerbaijan, culminating in the 2016 four-day war of 2016 using artillery against Artsakh children and killing defenseless old people. Therefore, it is necessary to put an end to hate rhetoric and dedicate peoples to peace and respect for freedom of religion, "said the Italian MP.In this regard, he is convinced that it is extremely important that Italy, which chairs the OSCE in 2018 and is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, continues to support the work of the co-chairs within the framework of the only internationally acceptable mandate to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.