Artsakh Republic

National Assembly Factions'

Statement

The last days of February mark another crime against the Armenian people - the 33rd year of the Sumgait genocide.

Those massacres fully comply with the 1948 UN Convention "On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" the legalization of genocide and crimes against humanity as defined by the Convention. The Sumgait massacre was a state-planned operation by the authorities of Soviet Azerbaijan and their sponsoring forces, which targeted the ethnic Armenians who built the city. All this was accompanied by unspeakable cruelty and violence, looting and robbery. The violence on the grounds of national-religious intolerance did not receive an adequate assessment from the political leadership of the Soviet Union and the relevant international structures, which made massacres and forcible deportations a way of working for the Azerbaijani regime. In the following months the population of Baku, Gandzak and the left bank of the Kura became new disaster victim became. About half a million Armenians were deported from Azerbaijan, and the native Armenians of Northern Artsakh were deprived of their homeland.

The Sumgait genocide was the response of the Azerbaijani authorities to the struggle of the Artsakh Armenians for their freedom and self-determination, which began in February 1988.

The peaceful population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was also the target of large-scale aggression by Azerbaijan. It became more inhumane during the new war unleashed by Azerbaijan in the fall of 2020.

Paying tribute to the memory of thousands of our compatriots who fell victim to the Sumgait genocide and the aggression of Azerbaijan, condemning discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia in all areas, the factions of the National Assembly of the Artsakh Republic

call on the international community, countries and organizations that respect fundamental human rights and freedoms to recognize and condemn the Sumgait genocide and Azerbaijan's anti-Armenian policy.

"Democratic Party of Artsakh" faction:

"Armenian Revolutionary Federation" faction

Artsakh "Justice" faction

"United Homeland" faction

"Free Homeland - UCA" faction