According to UN Convention, Baku pogrom was genocide — Marina Grigoryan

January 18 2025, 11:39

Politics

We are witnessing how Turkey is committing another genocidal act through the hands of Azerbaijan, Marina Grigoryan, deputy editor of the Golos Armenii newspaper, told Alpha News.

“What happened in Artsakh in the fall of 2020 and in September 2023, and what is happening today are different links in one large historical chain. It began at the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century, during the years of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, and continued in Azerbaijan in 1988-1992; then came the murder in Budapest, the April War, the surrender of Artsakh, and the genocide.

Now we are witnessing how, through the hands of Azerbaijan, Turkey is carrying out another genocidal act,” Marina Grigoryan stated with regret.

According to her, since the organizers of the genocide remained unpunished, it continues today.

“When we talk about the genocide that took place 35 years ago, in all its characteristics it corresponds to the provisions of the UN Genocide Convention. It was the impunity of the perpetrators of the genocide and pogroms in Baku, and most importantly, the planners, that allowed Azerbaijan to carry out all subsequent acts of genocide.

The events in Baku lasted a week and remained unpunished, no one tried to stop and protect the Armenians. This indicates that they were planned, organized at the state level and even agreed upon with the Soviet leadership, which sent troops to Baku only on January 20, when the threat that the so-called National Front of Azerbaijan would seize power had arisen,” she said.

Grigoryan noted that after the pogroms in Baku, there is no precise official data on how many people were killed.

“We still do not know the exact number. I believe we will never know the true number of victims of the genocide committed by Baku. Unlike Sumgait, where we at least have an official number of those killed, 27—although there were many more; we assume that 150-250 people were killed in Sumgait—after the Baku pogroms, any official number of victims was not published. We assume that the number of those killed could reach 600, and there were also thousands of victims,” Marina Grigoryan said.