A special meeting of  Inter-Parliamentary Committee  on Cooperation  between  NA of Armenia and Artsakh, dedicated to  30th anniversary of   pogroms in Baku  held in Yerevan

ArmInfo.  During studying the crime of 30 years ago, a simple and human question arises: how could the same people undergo pogroms in the city three times, the  cornerstones of which it  laid with his own hands?

According to the information received by ArmInfo, the Armenian  parliament stated this on January 18 in a speech at a joint special  meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Cooperation between  the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh and the National  Assembly of the Republic of Armenia , dedicated to the 30th  anniversary of the pogroms in Baku, NKR Speaker Ashot Ghoulyan  stated.

The meeting was chaired by the Speaker of the Parliament of Armenia  Ararat Mirzoyan and the Head of the National Assembly of Artsakh  Ashot Ghoulyan. At the beginning of the meeting, those present  honored with a minute of silence the memory of those who died during  the events mentioned.

"There is only one answer - a creative and constructive Armenian did  not lose his humanity, did not give up his heritage, each time  overcoming his pain. The incident in Baku in 1990 was a crime against  humanity, organized and carried out by the authorities of a  neighboring country. For a week, the Armenians in Baku was subjected  to humiliation, torture and pogroms in their homes, at workplaces, in  educational and other institutions, as a result of which hundreds of  people died and thousands more left, which was concealed by the  authorities of a neighboring country from the beginning.

These actions were part of the suppression of the full-fledged policy  of the Artsakh Armenians who fought for freedom in 1988, which  manifested itself in February 1988 in Sumgait, in November in  Gandzak- Kirovabad, and in 1990 in Baku. Unfortunately, after 30  years, Azerbaijan continues to shirk responsibility for its past,  directing the arrows of the brutal January days in a different  direction and presenting itself as a victim. Armenianphobia continues  to be a priority of the policy of Azerbaijan, which is reflected even  in the fields of education, science, sports and culture. In recent  days, we have witnessed another manifestation of it, when an  Azerbaijani singer refused to perform on the same stage with an  Armenian singer. What is this if not the result of a  government-sponsored and xenophobic policy?

Against the background of persistent efforts to present Baku as an  intercultural capital, cultural monuments that are the cultural  heritage of the Armenian and other peoples are muffled. It is no  coincidence that not only thousands of Armenians, but also Armenian  cultural values in Baku became victims of the tragic events of 1990.  A couple of days before the pogroms,  "Grigor Lusavorich" church was  burned, and thousands of" khachkars" and cemeteries were destroyed.

Although the crime of the late 20th century was recorded and  condemned by the international community, its organizers and  perpetrators were not held liable. On the other hand, people who left  Baku and took refuge in Artsakh did not receive international status  and support. The Artsakh community constantly called on the  international community, international organizations and  parliamentary structures to give a legal assessment of what had  happened and to prevent the policy of Armenianphobia carried out in  Azerbaijan at the state level. Artsakh will be consistent in the  issue of holding the organizers and performers of the genocide  committed against Armenians in different settlements of Azerbaijan  accountable>, Ashot Ghoulyan said.

In turn, Ararat Mirzoyan stated that exactly 30 years ago these days  in the capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, Baku, with the obvious  permission and assistance of the authorities, events occurred that,  unfortunately, are known to us from history.

<People were subjected to inhuman torture, thousands were forced to  leave their homes and continue to live in refugee status. These  people were killed, tortured and persecuted only because they were  Armenians. A few days later, the Supreme Council of Soviet Armenia  stated that the pogroms in Baku were an obvious manifestation of the  chauvinistic policy of Soviet Azerbaijan. Mockery of fate can be  called the fact that they became the third only during the 20th  century in Baku, which gained fame as the center of multiculturalism.  The same events in exactly the same scenario occurred in the same  city also in 1905 and 1918.

Shortly before the Baku pogroms, a massacre of the Armenian  population took place in Sumgait and Kirovabad-Gandzak. Shortly after  the pogroms in Baku, the massacre in Maraga and elsewhere began.

Armenianphobia manifested itself in the 21st century, the Azerbaijani  authorities proclaimed the murderer Ramil Safarov a national hero,  who killed an Armenian soldier with an ax, but this did not end  there, and civilians were brutally killed in Talish in 2016.   Evidence of this policy can be found throughout Azerbaijan: from  textbooks to statements by the country's president, in which the  entire Armenian people are declared the enemy of the people of  Azerbaijan to be destroyed.  Pogroms in Baku were only part of the  long-term anti-Armenian policy of the authorities. They were preceded  by clearly organized steps dating back to the 1980s, mainly social,  cultural, educational, which forced Armenians to leave their homes  and leave Baku, as a result of which the Armenian population of Baku  was already significantly reduced at that time ...  I want to note  that despite the policies of the Azerbaijani authorities in those  days, there were Azerbaijanis in Baku who helped the Armenians escape  from death. I want to heartily, sincerely thank these individuals and  urge them to also voice their memories of these pogroms, break the  wall of Armenianophobia to prevent a recurrence of such events. In  this way, they can also ensure their own security.  In conclusion, as  the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, I  again want to state and confirm that all the pogroms in Sumgait,  Baku, Kirovabad, the periodic nature of these pogroms, their repeated  occurrence over the course of one century, other previous and  subsequent manifestations of the anti-Armenian policy make physically  safe impossible the existence of Armenians under the sovereignty of  Azerbaijan.  Consequently, the only possible way of the existence of  Armenians in Artsakh is the self-determination of Artsakh, and  Armenia is the guarantor of the realization of this right of the  Artsakh people>, Mirzoyan noted.