accounts of anti armenian human rights violations in azerbaijan accounts of anti armenian human rights violations in azerbaijan prelude to current events in nagorno karabakh they grab papa carry him into one room and mamma and me into another they put mamma on the bed and start undressing her beating her legs they start tearing my clothes right there in front of mamma i don t remember where they went what they did or how much time passed i had the feeling that they beat me on the head on my body and tore my clothes all at the same time i don t even know what i said the atrocities started i was savagely raped in that room they argued among themselves who would go first deposition of karine karina grigorevna m born secretary typist azsantekmontazh trust sumgait construction and installation administration secretary of the smu komsomol organization resident at building b apartment microdistrict no sumgait azerbaijan on the th my sister marina and i went to the movies the seven o clock show at the theater that is across from the city party committee about yards away the sk theater they were showing an argentinian film the abyss before the film we noticed about to people standing near the podium at the city party committee but they were silent there s no conversation whatsoever and we couldn t figure out what was going on that is we knew it was about karabagh but what it was exactly what they were talking about if someone gave a speech or not we didn t know we bought our tickets there were or people in the theater this was a very small number for that large movie theater the film started about minutes later they stopped the film a crowd burst in about people they came up onto the stage well mostly they were young people from to years old they demanded that an armenian woman come up onto the stage they used foul language and said that they were going to show what azerbaijanis were capable of what they could do to armenian girls i thought that s what they meant because they had demanded a girl specifically marina and i were sitting together i told her to move over there were some russian girls sitting nearby so that if someone recognized me or if something happened they would take me and not marina it got quiet or girls jumped up to run out but the door was closed it s only opened at the end of the show and they returned to their seats everyone in the theater was looking at one another russians azerbaijanis people of various nationalities but no one reacted at all no one in the auditorium made a sound they were silent looking at one another and gradually started to leave some guy a really fat one says ok we ve scared them enough let s leave they leave slowly pompously it seemed to me that those people were not themselves either they had smoked a bunch of anasha or had taken something else because they all looked beastly like they were ready to tear anyone apart then it was all over as though nothing had happened at all the film started up again it was one of those cheerful films which should have only brought pleasure made you happy to be alive we could barely sit to the end so it had started at seven it was over by nine and it was dark marina and i were walking home lenin street that s the center of town lenin street was packed just packed with young people they were shouting something about karabagh and something about armenians we weren t especially listening because the way we were feeling we didn t know if we were going to make it home or not and just what had happened anyway public transportation wasn t running incidentally when we came out of the theater we saw police policemen standing there the director of the movie theater was looking at the doors because when they were leaving they had broken the glass the doors there are basically all glass everything was broken he stood there grief stricken but looking as though nothing really big had happened like some naughty boys had just broken them quite by accident with a slingshot well since he looked more or less calm i decided that nothing all that super serious had happened we went out very slowly we wanted to catch a bus we live literally one stop away we didn t want to go on foot not because it was dark but because something might happen we flagged down a cab but the driver didn t want to take us we told him we live near the bus station and he said he d take us to the bus station and not a yard farther i said well ok so we got into the cab and managed to get there something incredible was happening at the bus station there was a traffic jam public transportation was at a standstill and everyone was shouting ka ra bagh they re not going to give up karabagh i go home and tell my family what s going on and there s immediate panic in the house mamma says what should we do like the end had come they were going to come kill us that s it somehow we managed to cheer ourselves up nothing that bad could happen where are we living anyway just what kind of social order do we have somehow we manage to calm mamma down and we went to bed but no one could sleep everyone made as though nothing had happened that was on saturday in short the day went by we didn t go anywhere and didn t call our relatives no one did anything because life goes on that day i realized something was approaching but what exactly i couldn t guess on the th everything was like it was supposed to be we lived like we always had there were five of us at home mamma papa and us three sisters lyuda marina and i my sister lyuda was in yerevan at the time we sat at home and no one went out later we learned that a demonstration had started that morning it all started they were smashing up stores we were sitting at home and didn t know anything about it then a girlfriend of mine lyuda zimogliad came by at around three o clock i think we worked together we did our apprenticeships together she s a russian girl she said that something awful was happening in town i asked don t they want armenians well what are they after if they re already in that state she says no nothing like that it s just a demonstration but it s awful to watch it somehow it feels like a war has broken out public transportation has been stopped the cabs the buses well it s just a nightmare then papa decides to go to the drugstore my mother was having allergy problems at the time he left the house and our neighbor aunt vera asked him where are you going stop there are such terrible things going on in the courtyard aren t you afraid to go out papa didn t know what she was talking about she simply pushed him back into the entryway he came home and told mamma mamma said well if aunt vera was talking like that it means that something is really going on but we didn t go see her she s a russian she lives across from us i had to see my friend out around five o clock i tell lyuda ok look it s time for you to go it s late already i ll see you out mamma says you don t need to go it s too late already you can see what the situation in town is so we decided to stay home dinner was ready mamma says let her eat with us then she can go we sat down at the table but no one was hungry no one was in the mood we just put everything out on the table to calm ourselves down and make it appear that we re eating we turned on the television and the show in fairy tale land was coming on we cleared the table we hear some noise out in the courtyard i go out on the balcony but i can t see what s going on because the noise is coming from the direction of the bus station and there is a story building in the way there is mob of people i can t figure out what s happening they re shouting something looking somewhere i can t make out what is going on i go down to a neighbor she s an azerbaijani we ve been friends of her family for about years i go down to look from their place i see people shouting looking at the and story buildings near the bus station just then soldiers set upon them about people with clubs the mob runs off in different directions i even see several people from our building they are looking and laughing i decide that means it s not all that bad if they are laughing it means they re not killing anyone but now the crowd suddenly dashes toward the soldiers one of the soldiers cannot manage to get away they start stomping on him with their feet everyone s kicking him i become ill and go home and explain in general terms that horrible things are going on out there can t speak well they ve probably killed that soldier the way that crowd is if each of them kicked him just once they took his club away from him and started to beat him with it but it was far away and i couldn t see if he got up and left or not i become terrified and go home and say lyuda don t go anywhere stay at our place because if you go out they could kill you or then the crowd runs over closer toward our building and stands at the story building and starts shouting something we go out onto the balcony all of our neighbors are also out on theirs too everyone is standing staring the mob is shouting and about minutes later comes running toward our building as it turns out at the story building the azerbaijani neighbors went down and kept them from coming in there s only one entryway there they could stop them they all run up to our building mamma immediately starts closing the windows afraid that they might throw stones they have stones and they break the windows all of them there are very many people we have a large courtyard and it s packed with people they spill up to the first floor so they don t crush each other they crawl up on trees posts and garages it s just a huge cloud of people they break and burn the motorcycle of the armenian sergey sargisian from our building we close the windows and immediately hear tramping in our entryway they come up to our fifth floor with a tremendous din and roar it s incomprehensible mamma told me later that they were shouting father s name grisha open the door we ve come to kill you or something like that i don t remember that i was spaced out kind of mamma says into the bedroom quickly in the bedroom we have two tall beds part of our dowry mamma says hide there they probably won t come in there they ll ask something say something and leave she says we ll tell them that we live alone here i can t imagine that my parents will stand out in the hall alone talking with some sort of beasts i go to them and say that i ll stand together with them i ll talk with them if they come maybe i can find a common language with them all the more so if they know me i speak azerbaijani more or less and i can find out what they want i told marina and lyuda to hide under the bed and my sister lyuda i can t remember if i told her anything or not then they open the door it s like they blew on it and it broke and fell right into the hall the crows bursts in and starts to shout get out of here leave vacate the apartment and go back to your armenia things like that i tell them what has happened speak calmly one of you tell me calmly what has happened in azerbaijani they say get out of the apartment leave i say ok go downstairs we ll gather everything we need and leave the apartment i realize that it is senseless to discuss any sort of rights with them these are animals they must be stopped the ones standing in the doorway the young guys say there are old people and one girl with them too bad they take two or three steps back it seems as though i have pacified them with our exchange then someone in the courtyard shouts commanding them don t you understand what you are saying kill them and that was it that was all it took they grab papa carry him into one room and mamma and me into another they put mamma on the bed and start undressing her beating her legs they start tearing my clothes right there in front of mamma i don t remember where they went what they did or how much time passed i had the feeling that they beat me on the head on my body and tore my clothes all at the same time i don t even know what i said the atrocities started i was savagely raped in that room they argued among themselves who would go first later i remember i came to i don t know if i m dead or alive someone comes in someone tall i think clean shaven in an eskimo dogskin coat balding he looks around at what s happening at that instant everything stops it seems to me that he is either their commander or that somehow everything depends on him he looks and says well we re done here they are beating mamma on the head they break up the chairs and beat her with the chair legs she loses consciousness and they decide that she s dead papa was out cold they want to throw lyuda off the balcony but they can t get the window open apparently the window frames are stuck after the rain and the windows can t be opened they leave her next to the window she was thinking about being thrown out the window and passed out she s not a real strong person anyway he looks at me and sees that i m saying something that i m still twitching well i start saying the opposite of what i should be which is humbling myself and pleading i start shouting cursing they don t get any entreaty out of me i already know that i m dead why would i humble myself before anyone and he says that if that s what i think since my tongue is so long maybe he thinks that i still look quite appealing in short he commands that i be taken outside i no longer saw or remembered what was happening to marina and lyuda i don t know if they are alive or not they take me outside they are dragging me by my arms by my legs they are hitting me against the wall the railings something metal while they are carrying me someone is biting me someone else is pinching me i don t even know i think my god when will death come if only it were sooner then they carry me out throw me near the entryway and start kicking me i lose consciousness what happened after that how many people there were i don t remember i come to after a while i don t remember how long a neighbor is bringing me clothing i m entirely covered with blood she puts a dress on me i remember that i said the same words over and over again mamma what happened mamma what have they done to us where are we whose house are we at i can t make sense out of anything there is a guy standing over me i sort of know him he served in afghanistan his name is igor he brought me indoors when they all went to the third entryway and killed a person there igor gathered his courage took me into his arms and brought me to the neighbors even though he s small minded he put himself at risk igor agayev is azerbaijani he served in afghanistan there are three brothers the older brother also served there i think now he s stationed here on the border in armenia igor brought me to the neighbors and then helped me come to my senses saying karina i know you calm down i m not one of them how do i know who s who and what s what i come to and they clean me up i was covered in blood then papa i saw papa i saw mamma and marina too igor was there when they dragged marina and lyuda out from under the bed marina lyuda said that she was russian they said we ll let you go we aren t touching the russians go and while they are dragging marina out she decides she s going to tell them she s azerbaijani igor immediately grabs marina s and lyuda s hands because he knows marina and knows that she is armenian and is our sister and takes her to the second floor to a neighbor s and starts pounding on the door so she will open up she opens the door and igor pushes them in there so they survived my sister lyuda lost consciousness after the bandits started stealing things while they were going downstairs taking things downstairs then coming back up again lyuda seized the opportunity and crawled under the bed and stayed there then when she was herself again she found a torn night shirt and put it on and some sort of robe and went to a neighbor s on the fourth floor the one whose apartment i had watched the crowd from the friend of ours and knocked on the door the neighbor opened and said i m not going to let you in the apartment because i m afraid of them but i ll give you some stockings and we ll leave the building lyuda says i ll stay at your place because of what s going on they keep going up and down the stairs it was just for a moment just a moment in life but the neighbor wouldn t consent lyuda came back to our place and lay under the bed i came to mother was there i can t remember my supervisor s telephone number but something had to be done somehow i remembered and called and he came to get us he didn t have any idea what was going on he thought we were simply afraid he didn t know that they were killing us and that we had passed between life and death he came and got us and took us to the police precinct there they looked us over i was having trouble walking my lungs hurt badly it was hard to breathe my supervisor s name is urshan feyruzovich mamedov he s the head of our administration they took us there when we were leaving i saw a great number of buses full of soldiers at the entrance to town the buses were ordinary passenger buses there were very many soldiers we left around eleven right after eleven if these people could stop what was happening they could save a great many lives because the crowd was moving on toward the school and what was going on there i think everyone know not only in sumgait not only in yerevan because there they murdered them all one after the next without stopping after us i think people died in microdistrict no and to of them were from buildings and in our building one person died and one old woman died from building that s the building in front of ours there young azerbaijani men stopped the mob and wouldn t let it into their building incidentally when we were at the neighbors marina called our relatives to warn them so they would all know what was happening i called a aunt in microdistrict no they have three neighbors who are armenians i said run quickly i can t explain what s going on hide do what you can just stay alive hide at azerbaijanis ones who won t give you away at that moment three people came in policemen i think they were azerbaijanis i was in such awful condition my face was completely distorted my lips were puffed up there was blood my eye was swollen no one thought i would ever see anything out of that eye again my forehead was badly cut and one half of my face was pushed out forward no one would have thought that i would survive get my normal appearance back and be able to grasp anything at all i started to scream at those people why did you come who sent you here no one wants you here haven t you killed people people yet what are you doing here one of the soldiers said don t scream at us we re muslims but we re not from the sumgait police they called in from daghestan so at that point the daghestan police were there when we got to the police precinct there were an awful lot of police there there were soldiers police with dogs ambulances firemen i don t know maybe they were waiting for people to bring them the goners and the seriously injured to treat them there in the police precinct i don t know what they were there for there were also doctors from baku there they examined lyuda and me and said these women need to go to the maternity home but we don t know what to do with the rest so they took us and i lost contact with my parents my boss everyone my boss said don t worry i ll find you no matter where you are no matter what happens we went to the hospital there we were examined by a department head from the sumgait maternity home pashayeva i think her name was she examined us the ambulance was from baku i figured out that the sumgait ambulances hadn t done anything they didn t respond to any calls people called and neither the police nor the ambulances showed any sign of life that doctor looked me over and i could tell from her behavior that something very good had happened for she became quite glad i even thought to myself god can it be that nothing all that bad is wrong she looks me over and says now why are you suffering so you don t know what your people have been doing your people did even worse things and i think great i have to deal with her and i felt so bad i thought why don t i just die so as not to have to hear more stuff like this from people like her here i am in this condition and being told about something that our people did i just didn t have the energy to say how could our people possibly be smart enough to think of something that yours haven t already done i stayed there then they brought in another woman ira b she was married and she was raped in her own apartment too there were three of us ira lyuda and the next morning they took lyuda and ira away they didn t do anything to help us this was in the old maternity home in the combined block they didn t do anything more than examine me that was it i didn t want any shots or tranquilizer nothing what shots could have calmed me down i didn t even want to look at them i lay in the ward either it just worked out that way or they did it on pur pose but i was alone i was alone even though the wards were packed that same evening a woman came by and asked me what was wrong with me that my face was disfigured she asked what had happened to me and i said better to ask your brother what happened there s no point in asking me your brother can better explain what happened she fell into a faint all the doctors threw themselves at her and the doctor categorically forbade anyone to come into my ward then people from work came to see me my boss his daughter they brought me clothing because i was literally naked the only thing i had on was a dress but the woman who gave it to me was very short and the dress was way up above my knees and the woman orderly said i can t believe you put on such a short dress who are you showing off your legs to here i went back to my ward thinking just one more thing from something people from work came and brought me something in a sack apples i think three or four pounds but i couldn t take them i had become so weak that it was just embarrassing i said that i couldn t take the apples and really didn t have any appetite no one had to bring me anything some woman took the sack and oh yes then i heard that the head doctor tell a nurse that my medical history should be hidden or torn up completely so that no one would know that i was an armenian maybe they wouldn t figure it out from looking at me so they must have been thinking that there would be some kind of attack that something else would happen that it would be worse or perhaps someone was outside on the street i don t know in any case i didn t sleep a wink that night the next morning they picked me up a whole police detail put me in a bus and off we went i didn t even know where they were taking me they took me to the club where the troops were the very one i was in that ill fated evening i got off the bus near the city party committee there were a great many troops tanks armored personnel carriers the whole scene was terrible i saw a few people i knew there and that calmed me a little i had already thought that i was the only one left so there were five or six of us left in sumgait after that night i still didn t know what happened to my parents they didn t come to see me in the hospital and my boss told me that everything was fine i didn t know whether to believe him or not maybe he was just trying to calm me down maybe something happened on the way then i went to the club and saw a lot of people i knew they all knew one another they were all kissing each other and asking what happened what went on two days later they came to see me from work they were there all the time each day they came showed interest and were constantly bringing me money they did everything they could of course i m most thankful to my boss the only one of my colleagues who didn t lose his presence of mind and who didn t change his opinions neither before nor after nor in the heat of the moment no matter what happened he constantly took an interest a sincere interest from the heart then about two days later the secretary of the party committee came not from our party organization but from the first trust which ours is part of comrade kerimov a very important figure in our town he made arrangements with the emergency medical personnel to take me away because if i sat down by myself i couldn t get up or lie down again there was something wrong with my lungs it was hard to breathe they examined me there several times there i lay were several doctors they all thought that that it must just be from all the blows i don t know they didn t diagnose anything in particular when i was in the maternity home i even asked i made it a point of insisting that they take me to the trauma section because i felt so awful there was no way something inside wasn t broken my ribs well they took me there and took x rays and said that everything was fine there were emergency medical workers on duty in the club the mother of one of marina s friends was there she was the head doctor at the sumgait children s clinic they had every kind of antifever agent in the world which was exactly what i needed at that moment i thought i said that i was having great difficulty breathing i couldn t seem to get enough air something was wrong with me they put tight bandages around my chest and waist later i overheard some people saying that i had been cut all over i think they just saw me being all bandaged up and decided that my breasts and face had been cut but i wasn t cut they took us to the khimik boarding house we lived there a long time soon appeared representatives they were agitating at first people would not talk to them and drove them off one of the armenian women shouted we demand that seidov come the response was it s seidov who sent us seidov is the chairman of the azerbaijani council of ministers the woman said we ll only see seidov s daughter have her come here we ll do the same things to her that they did to our daughters and then we ll deal with you agitators and so on more of them said have seidov himself come this went on day in day out the agitators kept coming and coming this drove us out of our wits then people gradually started departing for yerevan because they realized it was senseless to stay everything got on our nerves the smell the small children there were children at the sk club children who had literally just come out of the maternity home what were they doing in a club that didn t even have running water all the time at first we had to pay to eat there they even overcharged us as it turned out on the second day someone told us that they would bring us food for free the children were ill everything stank there well imagine about people in a small movie theater with seating for no more than you couldn t sit or lie down it was impossible to even move the stench was awful even the smallest infants took ill overnight there i heard that they were arriving seriously ill in yerevan the infants they have to be washed they have to be bathed not to mention that we the adults were ill and needed care people were fainting right and left i just don t know everyone was crying everyone only the young people the men somehow managed to keep it together but the women were in a constant state of panic it seemed to everyone that they would come any minute and kill and stab it seemed clear that we had been gathered together purposely like during the war so that they could burn the movie theater and there wouldn t be a single armenian left then people went up to the attic i didn t see them i only heard them because i was lying down and couldn t get up i lay right on the stage we had some room there apparently they caught two people with either oil or gas i think they wanted to burn the theater maybe someone saw them i didn t i was in no condition to open my eyes everyone was suspicious of everyone else they would ask aren t you an azerbaijani i think i saw you somewhere i think you re an azerbaijani they led out all the men and started letting them back in by checking their passports relatives might be covering for each other half of the people did not have any documents there were people who had run out of their homes in nothing but a pair of pants and slippers or wearing just a shirt not like they should have with their ids so on the th on sunday i think the police did nothing to help us on monday everything resumed where it had left off on block a they didn t spare a soul there not children not pregnant women nobody they killed they burned they hacked with axes just everything possible they murdered the melkumian family whom i knew my mother worked with them their daughter in law went to school with my older sister they were brutally murdered only the two daughters in law survived by a miracle one was able to save herself she ran away the neighbors wouldn t take her in so she ran about the building until she found refuge she was pregnant and had two small children this all continued on monday in block a on the th when the troops were already in the city they murdered people they overturned automobiles and they burned entire families they say they didn t even know for sure if the people were armenians or not i heard that the lezgins suffered too i m not sure myself i didn t see any lezgins who had been injured they burned cars so it s very difficult now to say exactly who died and who didn t it was very difficult to identify the corpses or rather what remained of the corpses after they were doused in gasoline and burned it s all very hard to imagine of course i heard that many people disappeared without a trace from the btz plant two people including a woman who worked the night shift aunt razmella who also lived in microdistrict they were stopping buses between baku and sumgait in the evening people who had been visiting baku were returning to sumgait and people from baku were going home from sumgait and there were students too they were simply savagely murdered they were stopping the buses the drivers immediately did what they were told because there was just no other way to deal with that hoard of brutally minded people they stopped the buses dragged the armenians out and killed them on the spot i didn t see it myself but i heard that they put them all in a pile so as to burn them later it was hard to discern from the corpses well you can t call them corpses you had to figure out from the ashes who it was l heard that two fellows saved two women one a student ira g if i m not mistaken she was in the hospital a long time after that and she still can t figure out who saved her she was also brutally raped and beaten and thrown onto a pile of corpses the fellow pulled her out of that whole pile of corpses put his coat on her took her into his arms and carried her to the city i still can t imagine how he managed to do that i heard that from engels grigorian he knows her apparently well a lot of people went to that hospital anyway she was in the hospital and singing a song in armenian and they wrote the words down and i think he still has that piece of paper because he says that a lot of people now have that song the one she sang in the hospital where she lay in such bad shape they couldn t find the guy who saved her he left her in someone s apartment and called the ambulance she was in such awful shape that probably like me she couldn t remember anyone s face i think that i knew one of the people who broke into our house maybe i had talked with him once but i received so many blows everything was just knocked out of my head i can t remember to this day who he was then it seems i saw the secretary of the directorate s party organization where marina works she goes to school and works she goes to night school at azi and works by day at the khimzashchita construction and installation administration i m the secretary of the komsomol organization at our administration and often met with the secretaries of party and komsomol organizations we had joint meetings i know them all i ve even talked with them and he i know is from armenia an azerbaijani but from armenia it became obvious that many of those people were azerbaijanis born in armenia they took me to various police stations to the police precinct and to the procuracy because the ussr procuracy got involved in the case and i iden tified the photographs of people who i could more or less recognize they showed me the people who were in our apartment they re working on our case but i can t even recognize them although it was proved that they were the ones they re processing it somehow they tell me that they know that someone held me by the arm and someone else held me by the leg when they were dragging me there was someone else in our apartment who did not even touch me he just stole a blanket and an earring or something like that all these people all of them as much as i ve heard about them and seen them they were all from kafan the secretary of the party organization is named najaf najaf rzayev he was there when everything started it must have been him because i didn t recognize anyone else in the crowd whom i knew besides him all the more since i told him listen you do something because you know me he turned away and went toward the bedroom where marina was well you couldn t see marina anyway there was such a noisy confusion of people that you couldn t make out anyone all of it flew right out of my head and then gradually i became myself again at the city party committee there were military people there i told them what went on and they wrote it all down i told them his name on march the secretary of our first trust party organization the one we re part of came to see us his name is najaf rzayev i tell mamma if he s here despite the fact that i gave his name it means that either his alibi has been confirmed or probably that they think i m crazy not responsible for my words he said what did they do to you how awful myself i hid an armenian family then after some time goes by he comes back again and says something entirely different i wasn t at home my family and i went to baku i said marina what is he saying he said something totally different before after that i didn t go to see our procurator our case is being handled by a procurator from voronezh fedorov by name fedorov told me that rzayev s case had just gotten to him and there were so names involved what are they doing with rzayev did he prove his alibi or not they just think that since i was hit in the head i can t say anything for sure whether it was him or not it will be an insult if he was in our apartment and doesn t have to pay for it but at the same time i m afraid to say i m a hundred percent sure that it was he because no mat ter who i name they tell me no you re wrong he didn t do that that one wasn t there all the faces have gotten mixed up in my mind who did what exactly i can t say when they took me outside there was a whole crowd there but i didn t see it because i had my eyes closed all the time it seemed to me that i always got it because of my eyes people were always hassling me for some reason it always seemed to me that my eyes are responsible when they were beating my face i thought they were trying to put my eyes out so i had my eyes closed they took me outside and started to beat me a young guy held my arms he works at the btz plant and right nearby across the road from us block is where all this was going on right across the road from us the btz dormitory is over there that s where he lives now he s in custody they even have proved as far as i know that it was he who killed shurik gambarian the clarinet player from the third entryway of our building one person in our building was killed it was that man a guy comes by who shared a room with the guy who was holding me he saw that he was holding me by the arms and that he was beating me but he didn t come over he just looked and then went into the dormitory a while after it was all over people started making announcements in town saying that investigators had been summoned that guy went and told them everything now they ve caught him everything s been proved now evidently they ve been beating him i don t know what they re doing with them over there but he himself said that he was working the night shift at the plant some young guy came to the plant and said everyone who wants to kill armenians come to the bus station on saturday at ten that was it he said the ones who wanted to went this was at the btz plant during the night shift probably late friday night it was at night they were at the sauna together and he said what do you mean do you understand what you are saying the others were silent probably in their hearts they were thinking i m going to go but they didn t say anything to one another he said that he thought it important to to go because he had heard a lot about what had happened in kafan that they had killed their azerbaijani sisters their mothers burned villages and all of that that guy was also born in kafan that is certain and marina says that the secretary of the party organization is from armenia too from i ve participated in the investigation a couple of times i m satisfied with them thus far they summoned us and asked about what happened and every word i said was recorded i met some guy there by the way he was an armenian i said that he was in our apartment but what he did i don t know his last name was grigorian eduard grigorian he s from sumgait from microdistrict he was sentenced i think to five years not his first time his mother is russian i met with him at the kgb in baku at the azerbaijani kgb they took us there and showed me photographs there were so many photographs i think they even photographed those people who were caught at curfew and i ve got them all confused i say the face was about like this the guy in the white coat with the red clasps but he could take that coat off and burn it somewhere and it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack well this guy grigorian i said he was in our apartment but he is so light complected that he looks like a lezgin i don t know what he did i can t remember maybe he beat me or raped me but he was in our apartment at the kgb he started asking me pleading with me there s no need for this all this stuff look me in the eyes you re like a sister to me i took a look at him and thought my god heaven forbid that i should have a brother like you but they were satisfied with my responses because i said everything without great certainty i was there with mamma then lyuda came in but when she came in she got sick immediately she wanted to kill him she crawled over the table at him she recognized him when she came to lyuda was lying on the balcony the mob threw her there and all of them ran into the bedroom we had all kinds of boxes with dishes in them the dowries for all three sisters they stole everything in the apartment leaving only small things at that moment lyuda came to and started remembering everything well seeing the faces hearing the voices two people were saying they could burn the apartment another says why burn the apartment when i ve got three kids and no place to live so this guy was in temporary housing he didn t have anywhere to live he was from sumgait they were sure that they would get the apartment besides the neighbors were azerbaijani why should they burn the apartment they might burn azerbaijanis that s what they said how did they know there were azerbaijanis there if they just picked a place thinking that armenians lived there we have a list of the residents for our part of the building our name is in there but how could they know that azerbaijanis lived on the other side of the wall from us so they didn t set fire to our apartment i don t know i was in such bad shape that if all of it had come to a halt when i was outside if someone had asked me what was happening i would have said that a civil war was going on well maybe not civil but probably civil because when they were beating me i opened my eyes and saw that all the neighbors were standing on their balconies and watching like at a free horror film so a civil war was going on and only the armenians were being fought if it were a world war or something like that they would have been fighting everyone but they only fought us then i met some women from our building some azerbaijanis they are crying they tell me karina we saw all of it how could it happen they re asking me well i just don t know what to call it if a normal girl can stand there and watch what happened to me i think that if it were the other way around either i wouldn t have been able to take it or i would have tried to avert it like that one azerbaijani woman did in front of our building a woman lives there an awful dissipated woman if you can call her a woman the dissipated life she leads two armenian families live there in her part of the building she came out on the balcony and saw what was happening to me and started to scream and curse she came down to the entryway and said you ll come in this entryway over my dead body so not one of them took it in his head to go in that entryway some folks were saying that those people were so out of control that they didn t even know what they were doing i don t think that s true they knew very well what they were doing if they didn t even lift a hand against that woman they couldn t have cared less about her but the fact that she was an azerbaijani stopped them they were just beasts they had smoked so much when they came to our place they were all chewing something i noticed everyone who came into the apartment was chewing something i think my god maybe i just think that maybe i m losing my mind but no they re all chewing something maybe it is some kind of drug it must be because at first glance they all seemed to be such normal people young clean shaven looking exactly as if they had come to some sort of celebration but they were shouting something they didn t talk they shouted as though there were deaf people there they screamed and screamed yeah killing killing we re killing the armenians only they didn t shout kill they shouted gurun ermianlary gurun literally means kill or destroy that s how it was i ll continue we hid in a captain s apartment he s an azerbaijani his wife is a tatar we were sitting in their apartment their kids were out in the yard their kids knew a whole lot this was in our part of the building on the third floor when mamma came to and couldn t find lyuda she took papa s hand this was while the looters were stealing things but they didn t pay attention because they were stealing things apparently they had already ceased killing and switched to stealing mamma found the courage to a boy said to my mother where s the gold mamma said he must have been to years old he even looked russian he was so fair skinned but the azerbaijanis from armenia are fair skinned i noticed they were all on the fair side he shouted they were all smashing things and he asks mamma where the gold is we kept our gold in the wardrobe with our important papers in a little black bag we kept everything in there mamma doesn t really like to wear gold she probably never even wore those things from the time they were bought for her they took everything that was lying on the cheval glass mamma thinks that the gold saved us because they threw themselves at the gold and mamma grabbed papa who was trying to breathe they had closed his mouth bound his hands and put a pillow and a chair on his face they had shoved something into his mouth so he would suffocate mamma grabbed him and tore all that stuff off he had something in his mouth he was having trouble breathing his nose was filled with blood mamma grabbed him and started running from the fifth down to the first floor because no one wanted to open their doors to them mamma said that by accident completely by accident that person opened his door he was sleeping and said half awake what s happened he sees that they are bloody mamma said at least go and find out what s happening to my daughters even if they ve burned them or murdered them at least bring the corpses he went looking for us at that moment lyuda was under the bed she says that after they left it seemed that someone was calling her name when he quietly called her she couldn t get out from under the bed she wanted to get out and was calling softly she thought she was shouting but in fact she was either silent or was only talking to herself it just seemed to her that she was shouting when she got out from under the bed everyone was gone and again she thought that she had lost her mind i ll never leave here never to hell with it it just seems that way to me i ll come to eventually but then when everything had settled down stopped that mall brought lyuda down and igor carried me in from outside or first i was brought in then lyuda i don t remember what order it happened in and mamma said listen they re all running around down there shouting something or other and running toward the other building it had more or less calmed down where we were who s dead who s alive we don t know i tried to call my girlfriend i had basically come to mamma says listen let s go upstairs at least get a mattress or something we don t know how long we ll be here maybe they didn t burn everything i don t get it all women have that feeling they want to get something from their homes maybe not everything was taken i tell mamma mamma what do you need any of that for to hell with it we re alive forget the rest of it all of it she says no let s go get at least something maybe we ll leave here spend the night at someone else s mamma went upstairs and their little boy their son alik was standing on the lookout lie was standing there to see if they were coming they only managed to run up there and grab something one time he shouts come back they re coming they didn t have enough time to get a lot mattresses from one apartment a blanket from another mamma got my knitting someone managed to grab our old things the ones we never wore out of the hall someone took father s old coveralls the neighbor his wife mamma and papa marina went with them i was in no condition to leave neither was lyuda we just sat they ran out and we closed the door and just then we hear that the mob is on its way toward our place upstairs they re dragging something again they were going toward the other building maybe over by the school or there was an unfinished building over there people said they were going toward the basement or the unfinished building they could gradually carry everything over there then things more or less calmed down i tried to call my boss later there was more noise we were on the third floor in a one bedroom apartment and a woman lives in the one bedroom place on the second floor asya dallakian she s an old woman retired she wasn t at home at that time she was usually in the country she has a married daughter there and her grandson is in the army she is only very rarely in town she gets her retirement money and the apartment is essentially vacant they started pounding on her door and broke it down she had two or three beds in there something like that she s a to year old woman who really does not even live there probably she had some pots a couple of metal bed frames and mattresses and a television when her grandson came she bought a television they started wrecking everything i started getting sick again i think my god what is going on around here when will this end we turned off the lights and sat as it turns out the people who weren t afraid the ones who knew what was going on knew not to turn off the lights we didn t know but they didn t come to where we were all the same they all knew very well that he was a captain he went out and closed the door and we sat in his apartment his last name was kasumov he s an exserviceman retired works up at the fire station at some plant or other he went out and stood at his door they tell him comrade captain don t worry we won t harm you you re one of us he went upstairs and they say aren t you taking anything from this apartment he says i don t need anything and the women who were standing in the yard we have a basement full of water the women who were standing in the yard saw those guys they left everything they stole on the first floor and ran upstairs again the women threw everything they had time to into the basement to save our property some things were left dirty pillows two or three other things and a rug a guy came downstairs really mad and he says where s the rug i just put it right here they tell him some guy came and took it and went off toward the school he ran off in that direction oh i forgot the most important point when igor picked me up in his arms there were women standing there who saw everything that was going on they just didn t tell me about it for a long time the wife of that military man she didn t want to kill my spirit i was already dead enough later she told me that after they murdered uncle shurik in the third entryway one of them the ringleader apparently a young man said where s the girl who was here and he became furious the woman tells him she came to she didn t know what to say think something up someone carried her off then they would comb the whole house and find me and our whole family so the woman says she came to and went to the basement now our basement is full of water so the whole mob dashes off to the basement to look for me or my corpse they took flashlights they were up to their waists in water water which had been standing there for years and soot and fuel oil they climbed down in there to get me then one of them said there s so much water down there she probably walked and walked and then passed out and died she met her death in the basement that s it we can leave no problem i didn t know that and when i was told i felt worse two times worse a lot worse so they didn t just want to pound me flat something more awful was awaiting me after that we of course didn t want to live in sumgait any longer we really didn t want to go back to our apartment when we moved i went up there and started to quiver and shake all over because i started remembering it all although the neighbors all sobbed it was all so cheap the people who sat in their apartments and didn t help us at a time like that i think that they could have helped i don t think that they were obligated to but they could have helped us because that one woman was able to stop that whole brutal crowd by herself that means they could have too it would have been enough foe one man or women to say what do you think you re doing that s all that would have done it there were apartments in our building not one person said it when i was lying on the ground and all those people were standing on their balconies i didn t hear anyone s voice no one said what are you doing leave her alone mamma even told one of the neighbor women that if it had been an azerbaijani woman in my place they would have dropped a bomb if it would have killed even one armenian they would have stood up for one of their own true they say that our neighbor from the fourth entryway an old sick woman tried to stop the pogrom the azerbaijanis have a custom if a woman takes her scarf and throws it on the ground the men are supposed to stop immediately the old woman from the fourth entryway did that but they stomped her scarf into the ground pushed her off to the side and said if you want to go on living you ll disappear into your apartment so she left that trick didn t work on them even the neighbors who helped us move told me ok fine calm down forget that it happened i said i d only forget it if i told them right then that it had happened to their daughter and if that didn t have any effect on them then i would forget everything too imagine that it happened to your sister and no one did anything anything april 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
