Annually in late February, the post-Soviet countries commemorate victims of tragedies in Azerbaijani Khojaly and Sumgait. Since the events which are usually called ‘the Sumgait massacre on ethnic ground’, three decades have passed but still there is no consensus on a cause of the events happened on February 27-28th, 1988, and who is responsible for them.
A political scientist Sergey Kurginyan stated about the Sumgait tragedy: “In the late 1980s, I came to Baku where I saw the events which had nothing in common with either official narrative or propaganda of our democratic opposition. I should openly say that the Armenians who were massacred in Sumgait were killed not by Azerbaijanis but by outsiders, recruited representatives of international private structures.”
“We know names of the representatives, we know the structures they belonged to at that time and the structures they belong to today. These people massacre Armenians, involving Azerbaijanis into that. And then they massacred Azerbaijanis, involving Armenians into that. Then they knocked Armenians and Azerbaijanis together. That’s how the controlled tension has started. We saw that. We saw what’s behind that,” the political scientist said.
According to him, the scene was awful but the most awful thing was different: “It was the fact that pseudo-democratic and pseudo-liberal myths that had nothing in common with the situation were considered to be truthful, obvious, absolutely right. They had already controlled people’s minds. The viruses bite into conscience and crowds fled toward certain sites, toward their own end, toward their own tragedy, toward their own infinite troubles where they found themselves later.”
Meanwhile, today the 27th anniversary of Khojaly genocide is commemorated. Many remember today that more than 25 years ago, one of Karabakh warlords and later Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan stated that the Armenians preferred not to speak about the tragedy. Later he told Thomas de Waal, the author of ‘The Black Garden’: “Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that they could mess with us; they thought the Armenians wouldn’t hurt civilians. We managed to break the [stereotype].”
That’s how the international society, as well as Armenians and Azerbaijanis themselves were deceived. It seems the tragedies in Khojaly, Sumgait, and Baku were committed to prevent any chance for peace. Moreover, the events opened the door to the Armenian government for the War Party – initially Robert Kocharyan, later Serzh Sargsyan.
