accounts of anti armenian human right violations in azerbaijan accounts of anti armenian human right violations in azerbaijan prelude to current events in nagorno karabakh right we should slaughter the armenians and there s no need to be afraid all of moscow is behind us i even heard that all moscow is behind us well i watched and listened in and realized that this was no joke deposition of yuri vagarshakovich musaelian born line electrician sumgait streetcar and trolleybus administration resident at building apartment block narimanov street sumgait azerbaijan i spent almost all of february doing overhaul the th was a short day at work we worked until eleven or eleven thirty and left for home i decided to go for a short walk i went to primorsky park i walked past the eternal flame and saw a group of about to people standing there when i had walked another to yards i heard the screech of automobile brakes behind me i turned my head toward the sound it was a light blue gaz volga i see that the people who were standing there have gone over to the car a man and a woman get out the man is expensively dressed in a suit and the woman has a raincoat on she doesn t have anything on her head and her hair is let down sightly reddish hair a heavy set woman they re to years old they get something out of the trunk the people start to help them i become curious just what are they pulling out of there when i got up close i heard them turn something on i didn t see what it was but it was probably a tape recorder they put it on the ground near the eternal flame honoring the baku commissars and formed a tight circle around it i ask what s going on someone tells me come listen well they were azerbaijanis i had asked in azerbaijani i hear appeals brother muslims our time has come and something else along that line i didn t understand what it was all about i walked around the group trying to get a look at the owner of the tape recorder but the circle drew in tighter new people started coming from various directions five here seven there and the comments started right we should slaughter the armenians and there s no need to be afraid all of moscow is behind us i even heard that all moscow is behind us well i watched and listened in and realized that this was no joke i quietly left and went home now before that at work i had heard that something was going on in karabagh that there were demonstrations there well people were saying all kinds of things but i didn t have any idea what was really going on my wife and son were at home but my daughter was at my aunt s house in baku i didn t say anything to my wife we sat and drank tea sometime around two o clock right behind our house suddenly there is noise whistling and shouting i looked out the window and saw a crowd the crowd is moving slowly like they show on tv when blacks in south africa are striking or having a demonstration and move slowly my wife asks what s going on out there i say i don t know i put on some outdoor clothes and went out to find out what it was all about in the crowd people are shouting down with the armenians and death to the armenians i waited for the entire crowd to pass at first they went down narimanov street on the side with the sk club and the city party committee then they turned and went against the traffic it s one way there down the street of the baku commissars toward the streetcar line i went home and told my wife there was a demonstration going on in fact i thought that we were having the same kind of demonstrations that they had had in yerevan and in karabagh aside from the things they were shouting i was surprised that there were only young people in the crowd and they were minors under draft age my wife and son wanted to go upstairs to visit a friend but i was kind of uneasy and said no let s stay at home instead an hour went by or maybe an hour and a half well i wasn t keeping track of the time i can t say exactly how long it was i look and see another crowd on narimanov but now on the side with the microdistricts the bazaar and the rossiya movie theater i put outside clothes on and went out again there s noise an uproar outside and the crowd has grown there are more people and whereas the first time there were individual shouts this time they are more focused more aggressive no i think something s wrong here this isn t any demonstration they would run stop then walk quickly and make sharp dashes and then run again i was walking along the sidewalk and they were in the street i followed them i was thinking i d just watch and see who knew where this was leading we came out on lenin square at the square the sk club is on one side and the city party committee is on the other i went toward the square and heard noise and shouting as though the whole town had turned out there was some sort of a rally going on i go closer and hear exclamations appeals i heard both anti armenian and anti soviet appeals we don t need perestroika we want to go on living like we have been now what did they mean by living like we have been the azerbaijanis work like everyone else but too many people live at the expense of the government and at the expense of others speculation theft and cheating go on all the time and not just in azerbaijan everywhere in all the republics but i ve never seen it anywhere else like i have in azerbaijan now at this rally someone says that they should go around to the armenians apartments and drive them out beat them and drive them out true i didn t hear them say kill them over the microphone i only heard beat them and drive them out i stayed at the square a few minutes longer first one then another are going up onto the stage and no one tries to stop the crowd off to the side of the crowd there were small groups of three or four people and i think they were mvd ministry of internal affairs or state security kgb there were also uniformed policemen there but i didn t see any of them try to pacify the crowd new people kept coming up onto the stage well i had finally decided that this could end badly this was no demonstration and i had to protect my family i left the square to return home and suddenly noticed a truck it was next to the city party committee on narimanov street it stood next to the tai lor s shop there a low truck and it had low wooden panels i see that some thing is being unloaded crates of some sort i decided to go look because after all those appeals i was apprehensive and thought there might be weapons in there they pulled the crates out onto the square not toward the city party committee but toward the sk club and when i went right up to them i saw that they were cases of vodka there were two people handing down the cases from the bed of the truck and on the ground there were many people to they were handing them down from the truck and each case was carried off by two people two people one case of vodka and there was a man standing right next to the truck and he was handing out roundish black lumps maybe about the size of a fist maybe a little bigger or smaller it was anasha when i passed next to that person he stood with his side to me there was about a yard and a half between us and two people were standing near him he has a package in his hand and he s pulling out anasha and handing it out i have never smoked it myself once i tried it for fun but i ve seen a lot of people smoke it i ve seen it many times and i know what it is i strolled around and no one asked me who i was or what i was doing there before i got to the glass bazaar i heard more howling more warlike shouting i turned around and saw them running well i ll just keep on going like i am i thought when they caught up with me i saw that they were carrying flags and i recognized the person who was carrying the flag on my side of the street he s a young guy or years old he was carrying a red flag which had ermeni oryum written on it in azerbaijani that means death to armenians that guy used to live off the same courtyard as us i don t really know what his name is but i know his father very well his father s name is rafik he used to be a cook and then became head chef he used to have a dark blue zhiguli van then he sold it and now he has a white zhiguli his family as i said lived on the same courtyard as we did our building was on narimanov street and theirs was on the street of the baku commissars their apartment was in the far entryway on the fifth floor the door on the left now rafik s little brother lives there and he rafik i heard got a new apartment either in the forth or eighth microdistrict in a word his son was carrying a flag that said death to armenians i was surprised because before this i had gotten the impression that all of this nonsense was being done not by people from sumgait but by azerbaijanis from agdam and kafan well anyway i went home my wife was upset i told her it s ok it ll pass they re young kids they ve just gotten all whooped up naturally i didn t want her to get overly upset after a while a new surge of crowd went by and this time they were breaking glass i could hear it breaking but i couldn t see where well i think here we go the machine s in motion they weren t handing out that vodka and anasha for nothing i didn t see people drinking and smoking on the spot but they certainly hadn t unloaded the vodka and hashish to put in a store window so the thought flashed through my head that the machine was running no one would stop them now they weren t even trying although i ll say it again the police were there i saw them and it s not just that the police weren t breaking them up they were joking with them they were having a good time true at the time i couldn t even imagine that under our government our much vaunted leadership and i m not afraid to say these words so many people died so many women were abused and how many abominations there were i couldn t imagine that under our much vaunted authorities and if i were to be specific i would say under the much touted authorities in our city of sumgait i couldn t imagine that such things could take place when they started breaking glass i told my wife and son let s go upstairs we went to our neighbors the grigorians on the fourth floor and in the evening when those crowds started going past again i went outside once more i stopped at the corner a place called that right next to the bazaar i look and see a crowd on the run and there a few yards from the entrance to the bazaar are three respectable looking men of around say years old the crowd was running and one of the three waved with his arm and pointed toward the bazaar and then the whole crowd as though it were one person wheeled and raced toward the bazaar and not a soul went past those three as though it were off limits well everything got all churned up there was more noise and the glass was flying again we spent the night at the neighbors my apartment was on the first floor there was really no way to defend yourself there in the morning i went out to buy bread and to see what was happening in town on the way i saw someone hunched up still i never found out who it was or what happened to him there were to people standing near him i got the bread and on my way back they had gathered around the person who was lying there hunched up sort of enclosing him because of the way they were standing you couldn t even see him that was on the morning of february everyone knows the rest may yerevan reference the sumgait tragedy pogroms against armenians in soviet azerbaijan volume i eyewitness accounts edited by samuel shahmuradian forward by yelena bonner published by aristide d caratzas ny pages david davidian dbd urartu sdpa org how do we explain turkish troops on s d p a center for regional studies the armenian border when we can t p o box even explain cambridge ma turkish mp march
