“The Sumgait Syndrome. Anatomy of Racism in Azerbaijan”

MIA Publishers, 2012
By NGO “Against Xenophobia and Violence”

Sumgait is 26 kilometres from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, and was home to some 18,000 Armenians in 1988. On 26 and 27 February 1988, demonstrations were organised in Sumgait under the slogan
“Death to Armenians!” What took place on the streets of Azerbaijan during the following three days has been referred to ever since with the horrific name of “Sumgait”.
The massacre of Armenians in Sumgait, February 27–29, were merely a continuation of the Azerbaijani authorities’ unswerving policy of racism towards Armenians and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population, with unpunished killings and deportations.

Survivors of the Maraghar Massacre

It was truly like a contemporary Golgotha many times over.
Baroness Cox
4/27/1998

The ancient kingdom of Armenia was the first nation to embrace Christianity—in A.D. 301. Modern Armenia, formerly a Soviet republic, declared autonomy in September 1991 and today exists as a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States. There you find many of the oldest churches in the world, and a people who have upheld the faith for nearly 1,700 years, often at great cost.

Nowhere has the cost been greater than in the little piece of ancient Armenia called Nagorno-Karabakh, cruelly cut off from the rest of Armenia by Stalin in 1921, and isolated today as a Christian enclave within Islamic Azerbaijan. Only 100 miles north to south, 50 miles east to west, there are mountains, forests, fertile valleys, and an abundance of ancient churches, monasteries, and beautifully carved stone crosses dating from the fourth century.

Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in Nagorno Karabakh

Institute for Religious Minorities in Islamic World (April 1993)
By Caroline COX and John EIBNER

Contents
Preface
Introduction
Basic Facts
A Conflict of Civilizations
The Genocide
The Pincers of Pan-Turkism
Soviet Rule