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March 1, 2013 Friday
Washington: HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF OF CALIFORNIA IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, February 28, 2013
Washington
The Library of Congress, The Government of USA has issued the following Speech:
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, this week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the pogrom against people of Armenian descent in the town of
Sumgait, Azerbaijan. The three-day massacre in the winter of 1988
resulted in the deaths of scores of Armenians, many of whom were burnt
to death after being brutally beaten and tortured. Hundreds of others
were wounded. Women and girls were brutally raped. The carnage created
thousands of ethnic Armenian refugees, who had to leave everything
behind to be looted or destroyed, including their homes, cars and
businesses.
These crimes, which were proceeded by a wave of anti-Armenian rallies
throughout Azerbaijan, were never adequately prosecuted by Azerbaijan
authorities. Many who organized or participated in the bloodshed have
gone on to serve in high positions on the Azeri government. For
example, in the days leading up to the massacre, a leader of the
Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Hidayat Orujev, warned Armenians in
Sumgait: ``If you do not stop campaigning for the unification of
Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia, if you don't sober up, 100,000 Azeris
from neighboring districts will break into your houses, torch your
apartments, rape your women, and kill your children.'' In a cruel
twist, Orujev went on serve as Azerbaijan's State Advisor for Ethnic
Policy and later as head of State Committee for Work with Religious
Organizations.
The Sumgait massacres led to wider reprisals against Azerbaijan's
ethnic minority, resulting in the virtual disappearance of
Azerbaijan's 450,000-strong Armenian community, and culminating in the
war launched against the people of Nagorno Karabakh. That war resulted
in almost 30,000 dead on both sides and created more than one million
refugees in both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In the years since the fighting ended, the people of Artsakh, the
region's ancestral name, have struggled to build a functioning
democratic state in the midst of unremitting hostility and threats
from Azerbaijan, as well as sniper fire and other incursions across
the Line of Contact between the two sides. Hatred towards Armenians is
both inculcated and celebrated in Azeri youth, as exemplified by the
case of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army captain who had confessed
to the savage 2004 axe murder of Armenian army lieutenant Gurgen
Margaryan, while the latter slept. At the time, the two were
participating in a NATO Partnership for Peace exercise in Budapest,
Hungary. After the murder, Safarov was sentenced to life in prison by
a Hungarian court and imprisoned in Hungary.
Last August Safarov was sent home to Azerbaijan, purportedly to serve
out the remainder of his sentence. Instead of prison, he was greeted
as a hero by the Azeri government and promenaded through the streets
of Baku carrying a bouquet of roses. President Ilham Aliyev
immediately pardoned Safarov and he was promoted to the rank of major
and given a new apartment and eight years of back pay.
In recent weeks, 75-year-old Akram Aylisli, one of Azerbaijan's most
celebrated writers, has been subjected to a campaign of hatred.
According to a report in the BBC, '[h]is books have been publicly
burnt. He has been stripped of his national literary awards. And a
high-ranking Azeri politician has offered $13,000 as a bounty for
anyone who will cut off his ear. Aylisi's 'crime?'-- in his short
novel Stone Dreams, he dared to look at the conflict between Azeris
and Armenians from the Armenian perspective.
With these disgusting acts, the Azeri state reminded the whole world
why the people of Artsakh must be allowed to determine their own
future and cannot be allowed to slip into Aliyev's clutches, lest the
carnage of Sumgait a quarter century ago serve as a foreshadowing of a
greater slaughter.
For more information please visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/
March 1, 2013 Friday
Washington: HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF OF CALIFORNIA IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, February 28, 2013
Washington
The Library of Congress, The Government of USA has issued the following Speech:
Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, this week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the pogrom against people of Armenian descent in the town of
Sumgait, Azerbaijan. The three-day massacre in the winter of 1988
resulted in the deaths of scores of Armenians, many of whom were burnt
to death after being brutally beaten and tortured. Hundreds of others
were wounded. Women and girls were brutally raped. The carnage created
thousands of ethnic Armenian refugees, who had to leave everything
behind to be looted or destroyed, including their homes, cars and
businesses.
These crimes, which were proceeded by a wave of anti-Armenian rallies
throughout Azerbaijan, were never adequately prosecuted by Azerbaijan
authorities. Many who organized or participated in the bloodshed have
gone on to serve in high positions on the Azeri government. For
example, in the days leading up to the massacre, a leader of the
Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Hidayat Orujev, warned Armenians in
Sumgait: ``If you do not stop campaigning for the unification of
Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia, if you don't sober up, 100,000 Azeris
from neighboring districts will break into your houses, torch your
apartments, rape your women, and kill your children.'' In a cruel
twist, Orujev went on serve as Azerbaijan's State Advisor for Ethnic
Policy and later as head of State Committee for Work with Religious
Organizations.
The Sumgait massacres led to wider reprisals against Azerbaijan's
ethnic minority, resulting in the virtual disappearance of
Azerbaijan's 450,000-strong Armenian community, and culminating in the
war launched against the people of Nagorno Karabakh. That war resulted
in almost 30,000 dead on both sides and created more than one million
refugees in both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In the years since the fighting ended, the people of Artsakh, the
region's ancestral name, have struggled to build a functioning
democratic state in the midst of unremitting hostility and threats
from Azerbaijan, as well as sniper fire and other incursions across
the Line of Contact between the two sides. Hatred towards Armenians is
both inculcated and celebrated in Azeri youth, as exemplified by the
case of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army captain who had confessed
to the savage 2004 axe murder of Armenian army lieutenant Gurgen
Margaryan, while the latter slept. At the time, the two were
participating in a NATO Partnership for Peace exercise in Budapest,
Hungary. After the murder, Safarov was sentenced to life in prison by
a Hungarian court and imprisoned in Hungary.
Last August Safarov was sent home to Azerbaijan, purportedly to serve
out the remainder of his sentence. Instead of prison, he was greeted
as a hero by the Azeri government and promenaded through the streets
of Baku carrying a bouquet of roses. President Ilham Aliyev
immediately pardoned Safarov and he was promoted to the rank of major
and given a new apartment and eight years of back pay.
In recent weeks, 75-year-old Akram Aylisli, one of Azerbaijan's most
celebrated writers, has been subjected to a campaign of hatred.
According to a report in the BBC, '[h]is books have been publicly
burnt. He has been stripped of his national literary awards. And a
high-ranking Azeri politician has offered $13,000 as a bounty for
anyone who will cut off his ear. Aylisi's 'crime?'-- in his short
novel Stone Dreams, he dared to look at the conflict between Azeris
and Armenians from the Armenian perspective.
With these disgusting acts, the Azeri state reminded the whole world
why the people of Artsakh must be allowed to determine their own
future and cannot be allowed to slip into Aliyev's clutches, lest the
carnage of Sumgait a quarter century ago serve as a foreshadowing of a
greater slaughter.
For more information please visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/