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 on the way the driver says in fact there aren t any armenians left they burned them all beat them all and stabbed them deposition of vanya bagratovich bazian born foreman baku spetsmontazh administration umsmr resident at building apartment block sumgait azerbaijan during the first days of the events the th and the th of february i was away on a business trip on the th i had got my crew done the paper work and left for the zhdanov district that s in azerbaijan near the nagorno karabagh region after the th rumors started to the effect that in karabagh specifically in stepanakert an uprising had taken place they said uprising in azerbaijani but i don t think it was really an uprising just a demonstration after that the unrest started several armenians living in the zhdanov district were injured how were they injured they were beaten even women it was said that they were at the demonstrations but they live here and went from here to karabagh to demonstrate after that i felt uneasy there were some conversations about armenians among the local population the armenians had done this the armenians had done that right there at the site i was attacked a couple of times by kids well true the guys from my crew wouldn t let them come at me with cables and knives after that i felt really bad i didn t know where to go i up and called home and my children tell me there s unrest everywhere be careful well i had a project going on i told the second secretary of the district party committee what had been going on and said i wanted to take my crew off the site they wouldn t allow it they said nothing s going to happen to you we ve entrusted the matter to the police we ve warned everyone in the district nothing will happen to you well in fact they did especially detail us a policeman to look after me he knows all the local people and would protect me if something happened this man didn t leave me alone for five minutes he was at work the whole time and afterward he spent the night with us too i sense some disquiet and call home my wife also tells me the situation is very tense be careful we finished the job at the site and i left for sumgait first thing on the morning of the th when we left the guys warned me they told me that i shouldn t tell anyone on the way that i was an armenian i took someone else s business travel documents in the name of zardali and hid my own i hid it and my passport in my socks we set out for baku our guys were on the bus they sat behind and i sat up front in baku they had come to me and said that they had to collect all of our travel documents just in case as it turns out they knew what was happening in sumgait i arrive at the bus station and there they tell me that the city of sumgait is closed there is no way to get there that the city is closed off and the buses aren t running buses normally leave baku for sumgait almost every two minutes and suddenly no buses well we tried to get there via private drivers one man an azerbaijani said let s go find some other way to get there they found a light transport vehicle and arranged for the driver to take us to sumgait he took us there but the others had said i wouldn t go if you gave me a thousand rubles why because they re burning the city and killing the armenians there isn t an armenian left well i got hold of myself so i could still stand up so we squared it away the four of us got in the car and we set off for sumgait on the way the driver says in fact there aren t any armenians left they burned them all beat them all and stabbed them well i was silent the whole way odd miles i was silent the driver asks me how old are you old man he wants to know if i m being that quiet not saying anything maybe it means i m an armenian how old are you he asks me i say i m i m too but i call you old man i say it depends on god each person s life in this world is different i look much older than my years that s why he called me old man well after that he was silent too we re approaching the city i look and see tanks all around and a cordon before we get to the kavkaz store the driver starts to wave his hand well he was waving his hand we all start waving our hands i m sitting there with them i start waving my hand too i realized that this was a sign that meant there were no armenians with us i look at the city there is a crowd of people walking down the middle of the street you know and there s no traffic well probably i was scared they stopped our car people were standing on the sidewalks they have armature shafts and stones and they stopped us along the way the driver tells us how they know who s an armenian and who s not the armenians usually for example i m an armenian but i speak their language very well well armenians usually pronounce the azeri word for nut or little nut as pundukh but fundukh is actually correct the pronunciations are different anyone who says pundukh even if they re not armenian they immediately take out and start to slash another one says there was a car there with five people inside it he says they started hitting the side of it with an axe and lit it on fire and they didn t let the people out he says they wouldn t let them get out of the car i only saw the car but the driver says that he saw everything well he often drives from baku to sumgait and back when they stop us we all get out of the car i look and there s a short guy his eyes are gleaming he has an armature shaft in one hand and a stone in the other and asks the guys what nationality they are one by one we re azerbaijani they tell him no armenians here he did come up to me when we were pulling our things out and says maybe you re an armenian old man but in azerbaijani i say you should be ashamed of yourself and he left turned and left that was all that happened what was i to do i had to the city was on fire but i had to steal my children out of my own home they stopped us at the entrance to mir street that s where the kavkaz store and three large story buildings are that s the beginning of down town i saw that burned automobile there completely burned only metal remained i couldn t figure out if it was a zhiguli or a zaporozhets later i was told it was a zhiguli and the people in there were completely incinerated nothing remained of them not even any traces that driver had told me about it and i saw the car myself the car was there the skeleton a metallic carcass about to yards from the kavkaz store i see a military transport an armored personnel carrier the hatches are closed and people are throwing armature shafts and pieces of iron at it the crowd is and i hear shots not automatic fire it s true but pistol shots several shots there were azerbaijanis crowded around that personnel carrier someone in the crowd was shooting apparently they either wanted to kill the soldiers or get a machine gun or something at that point there was only one armored personnel carrier and all the tanks were outside the city cordoning off sumgait i walked on i see two azerbaijanis going home from the plant i can tell by their gait that they re not bandits they re just people walking home i joined them so in case something happened in case someone came up to us and asked questions either of us would be in a position to answer you see but i avoided the large groups because i m a local and might be quickly recognized i tried to keep at a distance and walked where there were fewer people well so i walked into microdistrict which is across from our block i can t get into our block but i walked where there were fewer people so as to get around well there i see a tall guy and to people are walking behind him and he s shouting into a megaphone comrades the armenian azerbaijani war has begun the police have megaphones like that so they re talking and walking around the second microdistrict i see that they re coming my way and turn off behind a building i noticed that they walked around the outside buildings and inside the microdistricts there were about or people standing on every corner and at the middles of the buildings and at the edges what they were doing i can t say because i couldn t get up close to them i was afraid but the most important thing was to get away from there to get home and at least find out if my children were alive or not 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
