March 7, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 41 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 COMMEMORATING THE 1988 SUMGAIT POGROMS AGAINST THE ARMENIAN COMMUNITY

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                           HON. BRAD SHERMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 7, 2019

  Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Speaker, I stand in solidarity with the Armenian 
American community in commemorating the February 1988 Sumgait Pogroms. 
Thirty-one years ago in the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait, peaceful 
Armenian residents were brutally targeted on the basis of their 
ethnicity and subjected to unspeakable crimes. In March 1988, The 
Economist reported the atrocities and documented the murder and 
mutilation of pregnant Armenian women and newborn babies in a maternity 
hospital. Other mainstream media reports from the time speak of 
Azerbaijani mobs hunting down Armenian families and committing murder, 
rape and property theft.
  The Sumgait Pogroms were the beginning of an escalation of violence 
against the Armenian minority, with a wave of anti-Armenian violence 
spreading to Kirovabad in November 1988 and to Baku in January 1990, 
which culminated in the forcible expulsion of 390,000 Armenians from 
Azerbaijan and the 1991-94 war over Artsakh (the former Nagorno 
Karabakh).
  In response to the Sumgait and Kirovabad pogroms, Nobel Prize-winning 
dissident, nuclear physicist and human rights activist, Andrei 
Sakharov, appealed to the international community to condemn the 
atrocities and prevent further violence by stating: ``Armenian people 
are again facing the threat of genocide. The events in Sumgait and 
Kirovabad may be its beginning. This must not be allowed to happen!'' 
(November 26, 1988, The New York Times)
  The government of Azerbaijan must be held accountable by the 
international community for the pogroms committed against its minority 
Armenian population, and I will continue to work in Congress to shed 
light on and learn the lessons of such atrocities.

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