accounts of anti armenian human right violations in azerbaijan b accounts of anti armenian human right violations in azerbaijan part b prelude to current events in nagorno karabakh part b of oh yes i just remembered while they were raping me they repeated quite frequently let the armenian women have babies for us muslim babies let them bear azerbaijanis for the struggle against the armenians then they said those muslims can carry on our holy cause heroes they repeated it very often continued from part a the six of them left they left and i had an attack i realized that the dan ger was past and stopped controlling myself i relaxed for a moment and the physical pain immediately made itself felt my heart and kidneys hurt i had an awful kidney attack i rolled back and forth on top of those christmas ornaments howling and howling i didn t know where i was or how long this went on when we figured out the time later it turned out that i howled and was in pain for around an hour then all my strength was gone and i burst into tears i started feeling sorry for myself and so on and so forth then someone came into the room i think i hear someone calling my name i want to respond and restrain myself i think that i m hallucinating i am silent and then it continues it seems that first a man s voice is calling me then a woman s later i found out that mamma had sent our neighbor the one whose apartment she was hiding in uncle sabir kasumov to our place telling him i know that they ve killed lyuda go there and at least bring her corpse to me so they don t violate her corpse he went and returned empty handed but mamma thought he just didn t want to carry the corpse into his apartment she sent him another time and then sent his wife and they were walking through the rooms looking for me but i didn t answer their calls there was no light they had smashed the chandeliers and lamps they started the pogrom in our apartment around five o clock and at i went down to the kasumovs i went down the stairs myself i walked out of the apartment how long can you wait for your own death how long can you be cowardly afraid come what will i walked out and started knocking on the doors one after the next no one not on the fifth floor not on the fourth opened the door on the third floor on the landing of the stairway uncle sabir s son started to shout aunt roza don t cry lyuda s alive he knocked on his own door and out came aunt tanya igor and after them mamma aunt tanya uncle sabir s wife is an urdmurt all of us were in their apartment i didn t see karina but she was in their home too lying delirious she had a fever marina was there too and my father and mother all of my family had gathered there at the door i lost consciousness igor and aunt tanya carried me into the apartment later i found out what they had done to our karina mamma said lyuda karina s in really serious condition she s probably dying if she recognizes you don t cry don t tell her that her face looks so awful it was as though her whole face was paralyzed you know everything was pushed over to one side her eye was all swollen and everything flowed together her lips her cheeks it was as though they had dragged her right side around the whole microdistrict that s how disfigured her face was i said fine mamma was afraid to go into the room because she went in and hugged karina and started to cry i went in as soon as i saw her my legs gave way i fell down near the bed hugged her legs and started kissing them and crying she opened the eye that was intact looked at me and said who is it but i could barely talk my whole face was so badly beaten i didn t say but rather muttered something tender something incomprehensible but tender my karochka my karina my little golden one she understood me then igor brought me some water i drank it down and moistened karina s lips she started to groan she was saying something to me but i couldn t understand it then i made out it hurts i hurt all over her hair was glued down with blood i stroked her forehead her head she had grit on her forehead and on her lips she was groaning again and i don t know how to help her she calls me over with her hand come closer i go to her she s saying something to me but i can t understand her igor brings her a pencil and paper and says write it down she shakes her head as if to say no i can t write i can t understand what she s saying she wanted to tell me something but she couldn t i say karina just lie there a little while then maybe you ll feel better and you can tell me then and then she says maybe it ll be too late and i completely just broke down i couldn t control myself then i moistened my hand in the water and wiped her forehead and eye i dipped a handkerchief into the water and squeezed a little water onto her lips she says lyuda we re not saved yet we have to go somewhere else out of this damned house they want to kill us i know they ll find us here too we need to call urshan she repeated this to me for almost a whole hour until i understood her every word i ask what s his number urshan feyruzovich that s the head of the administration where she works we have to call him but i didn t know his home number i say karina what s his number she says i can t remember i say who knows his number who can i call she says i don t know anything leave me alone i went out of the room igor stayed to watch over her and sat there he was crying too i say mamma karina says that we have to call urshan how can we call him who knows his telephone number i tell marina think think who can we call to find out she started calling several people didn t answer she called a girlfriend her girlfriend called another girlfriend and found out the number and called us back the boss s wife answered and said he was at the dacha my voice keeps cracking i can t talk normally she says lyuda don t panic get a hold of yourself go out to those hooligans and tell them that they just can t do that she still didn t know what was really going on i said it s easy for you to say that you don t understand what s happening they are killing people here i don t think there is a single armenian left in the building they ve cut them all up i m even surprised that we managed to save ourselves she says well ok if it s that serious and all the same she s thinking that my emotions are all churned up and that i m fearing for my life that in fact it s not all that bad ok fine fine she says if you re afraid ok as soon as urshan comes back i ll send him over we called again because they had just started robbing the apartment directly under aunt tanya s on the second floor asya dallakian s apartment she wasn t home she was staying with her daughter in karabagh they destroyed everything there we realized that they still might come back we kept on trying to get through to aunt tanya urshan s wife is named tanya too and finally we get through she says yes he s come home he s leaving for your place now he came of course he didn t know what was happening either because he brought two of his daughters with him he came over in his jeep with his two daughters like he was going on an outing he came and saw what shape we were in and what was going on in town and got frightened he has grown up daughters they re almost my age the three of us carried out karina tossed a coat on her and a warm scarf and went down to his car he took karina and me to the maternity home no first they took us to the po ice precinct they had stretchers ready as soon as we got out of the car they put karina and me on stretchers and said that we were in serious condition and that we mustn t move we might have fractures from the stretcher i saw about soldiers sitting and lying on the first floor bandaged on the concrete floor groaning this was around eleven o clock at night we had left the house somewhere around when i saw those soldiers i realized that a war was going on soldiers enemies everything just like a war they carried me into some office on the stretcher the emergency medical people from baku were there the medical attendant there was an older armenian urshan told him what they had done to karina because she s so proud she would never have told and this aging armenian his name was uncle arkady i think because someone said arkady get an injection ready he started to fill a syringe and turned around so as to give karina a shot but when he looked at her face he became ill and he was an old man in his sixties his hair was all grey and his moustache too he hugged karina and started to cry what have they done to you he was speaking armenian what have they done to you karina didn t say anything mamma came in then and she started to cry too the man tried to calm her i ll give you a shot mamma tells him i don t need any shot where is the government just what are they doing look what they ve done to my children they re killing people and you re just sitting here some teacups were standing on the table in there you re sitting here drinking tea look what they ve done to my daughters look what they ve turned them into they gave her something to drink some heart medicine i think they gave karina an injection and the doctor said that she had to be taken to the maternity home immediately papa and urshan i think even though papa was in bad shape helped carry karina out when they put her on the stretcher none of the medics got near her i don t know maybe there weren t any orderlies then they came to me what s the matter with you their tone was so official that i wrapped myself tighter in the half length coat i had a blanket on too an orange one aunt tanya s i said i m fine uncle arkady came over and was soothing me and then told the doctor you leave let a woman examine her a woman came an azerbaijani i believe and said what s wrong with you i was wearing my sister lyuda s nightshirt the sister who at this time was in yerevan when she was nursing her infant she had cut out a big hole in it so that it would be easier to breast feed the baby i tore the night shirt some more and showed her i took it off my shoulders and turned my back to her there was a huge wound about the size of a hand on my back from the indian vase she said something to them and they gave me two shots she said that it should be dressed with something but that they d do that in the hospital they put me on a stretcher too they started looking for people to carry me i raised up my head a little and wanted to sit up and this woman i don t know if she was a doctor or a nurse said lie still you mustn t move when i was lying back down i saw two policemen leading a man his profile seemed very familiar to me i shouted stop one of the policemen turned and says what do you want i say bring him to me i want to look at him they brought him over and i said that person was just in our apartment and he just raped me and my sister i recognize him note it down they said fine but didn t write it down and led him on i don t know where they were taking him then they put my stretcher near where the injured and beaten soldiers were sitting they went to look for the ambulance driver so he would bring the car up closer one of the soldiers started talking to me sister i don t remember the conversation exactly but he asked me were we lived and what they did to us i asked him where are you from he said that he was from ufa apparently they were the first that were brought in the ufa police later i learned that they suffered most of all he says ok you re armenians they didn t get along with you but i m a russian he says what are they trying to kill me for oh i remembered something else when i went out onto the balcony with kuliyev for a hammer and nails i looked out the window and saw two azerbaijanis beating a soldier near the kindergarten he was pressed against the fence and he covered his head with his arms they were beating him with his own club the way he cried mamma made my skin crawl i don t know what they did to him if he s still alive or not and something else before he attack on our house we saw sheets clothes and some dishes flying from the third or fourth floor of the neighboring building but i didn t think it was azerbaijanis attacking armenians i thought that something was on fire or they were throwing something they didn t need out or someone was fighting with someone it was only later when they were burning a passenger car in the yard when the neighbors said that they were doing that to the armenians that i realized that this was serious that it was anti armenian they took karina and me to the sumgait maternity home mamma went to them too and said i ve been beaten too help me but they just ignored her my father went to them and said in a guilty voice as though it was his fault that he d been beaten and says my ribs hurt so much those creeps have probably broken my ribs please look at them the doctor says that s not my job urshan said fine i ll take you to my place and if we need a doctor i ll find you one i ll bring one and have him look at you and he drove them to his apartment marina and i stayed there they examined us i was more struck by what the doctor said than by what those azerbaijanis in our apartment did to us i wasn t surprised when they beat us they wanted to beat us but i was very surprised that in a soviet medical facility a woman who had taken the hippocratic oath could talk to victims like that by happy or unhappy coincidence we were seen by the doctor that had delivered our karina and she having examined karina said no problem you got off pretty good not like they did in kafan when you armenians were killing and raping our women karina was in such terrible condition that she couldn t say anything she would certainly have had something to say then they examined me the same story they put us in a separate ward no shots no medicinal powders no drugs absolutely none they didn t even give us tea all the women there soon found out that in ward such and such were armenians who had been raped and they started coming and peering through the keyhole the way people look at zoo animals karina didn t see this she was lying there and i kept her from seeing it they put ira b in our ward she had also been raped true she didn t have any serious bodily injuries but when she told me what had happened at their place i felt worse for them than i did for us because when they raped ira her daughter was in the room she was under the bed on which it happened and ira was holding her daughter s hand the one who was hiding under the bed when they were beating ira or taking her earrings off gold when she involuntarily let go of her daughter s hand her daughter took her hand again her daughter is in the fourth grade she s years old i felt really awful when i heard that ira asked them not to harm her daughter she said do what you want with me just leave my daughter alone well they did what they wanted they threatened to kill her daughter if she got in their way now i would be surprised if the criminals had behaved any other way that night it was simply bartholomew s night i say they did what they would love to do every day steal kill rape many are surprised that those animals didn t harm the children the beasts explained it like this this would be repeated in to years and those children would be grown and then as they put it we ll come take the pleasure out of their lives those children this was about the girls that would be young women in years they were thinking about their tomorrow because they were sure that there would be no trial and no investigation just as there was no trial or investigation in and that those girls could be of some use in years this i heard from the investigators one of the victims testified to it that s how they described their own natures that they would still be bloodthirsty in to years and in years they themselves said that and this too everyone is surprised that they didn t harm our marina many people say that they either were drunk or had smoked too much i don t know why their eyes were red maybe because they hadn t slept the night before maybe for some other reason i don t know but they hadn t been smoking and they weren t drunk i m positive because someone who has smoked will stop at nothing he has the urge to do and they spoke in a cultured fashion with marina little sister don t be afraid we won t harm you don t look over there where i was you might be frightened you re a muslim a muslim woman shouldn t see such things so they were really quite sober so we came out of that story alive each every day we have lived since it all happened bears the mark of that day it wasn t even a day of those several hours father still can t look us in the eyes he still feels guilty for what happened to karina mother and me because of his nerves he s started talk ing to himself i ve heard him argue with himself several times when he thought no one is listening listen he ll say what could i do what could i do alone how could i protect them i don t know where to find the words it s not that i m happy but i am glad that he didn t see it all happen that s the only thing they spared us or maybe it happened by chance of course he knows it all but there s no way you could imagine every last detail of what happened and there were so many conversations karina and i spoke together in private and we talked with mamma too but father was never present at those conversations we spare him that if you can say that and when the investigator comes to the house we don t speak with father present on february the next clay karina and i were discharged from the hospital first they released me but since martial law had been declared in the city the soldiers took me to the police precinct in an armored personnel carrier there were many people there armenian victims i met the tovmasian family there from them i learned that rafik and their uncle grant had died they were sure that both had died they were talking to me and raya rafik s wife and grant s daughter and her mother were both crying then they took us all out of the office on the first floor into the yard there s a little one room house outside there a recreation and reading area they took us in there the women were afraid to go because they thought that they were shooing us out of the police precinct because it had become so dangerous that even the people working at the precinct wanted to hide the women were shouting they explained to them we want to hide you better because it s possible there will be an attack on the police precinct we went into the little house there were no chairs or tables in there we had children with us and they were hungry we even had infants who needed to have their diapers changed no one had anything with them it was just awful they kept us there for hours from the window of the one room house you could see that there were azerbaijanis standing on the fences around the police precinct as though they were spying on us the police precinct is surrounded by a wall like a fence and it s electrified but if they were standing on the wall it means the electricity was shut off this brought great psychological pressure to bear on us particularly on those who hadn t just walked out of their apartments but who hadn t slept for hours or or those who had suffered physically and spiritually the ones who had lost family members for us it was another ordeal we were especially frightened when all the precinct employees suddenly disappeared we couldn t see a single person not in the courtyard and not in the windows we thought that they must have already been hiding under the building that they must have some secret room down there people were panicking they started throwing themselves at one another that s the way it is on a sinking ship we heard those people mainly young people whistling and whopping on the walls we felt that the end was approaching i was completely terrified i had left karina in the hospital and didn t know where my parents were i was sort of calm about my parents i was thinking only about karina if heaven forbid they should attack the hospital they would immediately tell them that there was an armenian in there and something terrible would happen to karina again and she wouldn t be able to take it then soldiers with dogs appeared when they saw the dogs some of the people climbed down off the fence then they brought in about another soldiers they all had machine guns in readiness their fingers on the triggers we calmed down a little they brought us chairs and brought the children some little cots and showed us where we could wash our hands and took the children to the toilet but we all sat there hungry but to be honest it would never have occurred to any of us that we hadn t eaten for two days and that people do eat then closer to nightfall they brought a group of detained criminals they were being watched by soldiers with guard dogs one of the men came back from the courtyard and told us about it raya tovmasian it was like a different woman had been substituted earlier she had been crying wailing and calling out oh rafik but when she heard about this such a rage came over her she jumped up she had a coat on and she started to roll up her sleeves like she was getting ready to beat someone and suddenly there were soldiers and dogs and lots of people she ran over to them the bandits were standing there with their hands above their heads facing the wall she went up to one of them and grabbed him by the collar and started to shake and thrash him then on to a second and a third everyone was rooted to the spot not one of the soldiers moved no one went up to help or made her stop her from doing it and the bandits fell down and covered their heads with their hands muttering something she came back and sat down and something akin to a smile appeared on her face she became so quiet no tears no cries then that round was over and she went back to beat them again she was walking and cursing terribly take that and that they killed my husband the bastards the creeps and so on then she came back again and sat down she probably did this the whole night through well it wasn t really night no one slept she went five or six times and beat them and returned and she told the women what are you sitting there for they killed your husbands and children they raped and you re just sitting there you re sitting and talking as though nothing had happened aren t you armenians she appealed to everyone but no one got up i was just numb i didn t have the strength to beat anyone i could barely hold myself up all the more so since i had been standing for so many hours i was released at eleven o clock in the morning and it was already after ten at night because there weren t enough chairs really it was the elderly and women with children who sat i was on my feet the whole time there was nothing to breathe the door was closed and the men were smoking the situation was deplorable at eleven o clock at night policemen came for us local policemen azerbaijanis they said get up they ve brought mattresses you can wash up and put the children to bed now the women didn t want to leave this place either the place had become like home it was safe there were soldiers with dogs if anyone went outside the soldiers would say oh it s our little family and things like that the soldiers felt this love and probably for the first time in their lives perceived themselves as defenders everyone spoke from the heart cried and hugged them and they with their loaded machine guns in their hands said grandmother you mustn t approach me i m on guard our people would say oh that s all right they hugged them one woman even kissed one of the machine guns this was all terribly moving for me and the small children kept wanting to pet the dogs they took us up to the second floor and said you can undress and sleep in here don t be afraid the precinct is on guard and it s quiet in the city this was the th when the killing was going on in block a and in other places then we were told that all the armenians were being gathered at the sk club and at the city party committee they took us there on the way i asked them to stop at the maternity home i wanted to take karina with me i didn t know what was happening there they told me don t worry the maternity home is full of soldiers more than mothers to be so you can rest assured i say well i won t rest assured regardless because the staff in there is capable of anything when i arrived at the city party committee it turned out that karina had already been brought there they had seen fit to release her from the hospi tal deciding that she felt fine and was no longer in need of any care once we were in the city party committee we gave free reign to our tears we met acquaintances but everyone was somehow divided into two groups those who hadn t been injured who were clothed who had brought a pot of food with them and so on and those like me like raya who were wearing whatever had come their way there were even people who were all made up dolled up like they had come from a wedding there were people without shoes naked people hungry people those who were crying and those who had lost someone and of course the stories and the talk were flying oh i heard that they killed him what do you mean they killed him he stayed at work do you know what s happening at this and such a plant talk like that and then i met aleksandr mikhailovich gukasian the teacher i know him very well and respect him highly i ve known him for a long time they had a small room well really it was more like a study room we spent a whole night talking in that study once on march we heard that bagirov first secretary of the communist party of azerbaijan ssr had arrived everyone ran to see bagirov what news he had brought with him and how this was all being viewed from outside he arrived and everyone went up to him to talk to him and ask him things everyone was in a tremendous rage but he was protected by soldiers and he went up to the second floor and didn t deign to speak with the people apparently he had more important things to do several hours passed gukasian called me and says lyudochka find another two or three we re going to make up lists they asked for them upstairs lists of the dead those whose whereabouts are unknown and lists of people who had pogroms of their apartments and of those whose cars were burned i had about people in my list when they called me and said lyuda your mamma has arrived she s looking for you she doesn t believe that you are alive and well and that you re here i gave the lists to someone and asked them to continue what i was doing and went off the list was imprecise of course it included grant adamian raya tovmasian s father who was alive but at the time they thought him dead there was engels grigorian s father and aunt cherkez and maria the list also included the name of my girlfriend and neighbor zhanna agabekian one of the guys said that he had been told that they chopped her head off in the courtyard in front of the kosmos movie theater we put her on the list too and cried but later it turned out that that was just a rumor that in fact an hour earlier she had somehow left sumgait for the marina and from there had set sail for krasnovodsk where thank god she was alive and well i should also say that in addition to those who died that list contained people who were rumored missing or who were so badly wounded that they were given up for dead all the lists were taken to bagirov i don t remember how many dead were contained in the list but it s a fact that when gukasian came in a couple of minutes later he was cursing and was terribly irate i asked what s going on he said lyuda can you imagine what animals what scoundrels they are they say that they lost the list of the dead piotr demichev member of the politburo of the central committee of the communist party of the ussr has just arrived and we were supposed to submit the list to him so that he d see the scope of the slaughter of the tragedy whether it was one or fifty they told him that the list had disappeared and they should ask everyone who hadn t left for the khimik boarding house all over again there were people on our second list i think that the number was the one that got into the press and onto television and the radio because that s the list that demichev got i remember exactly that there were people on the list i had even told aleksandr mikhailovich that that was only a half of those that were on the first list he said lyuda please try to remember at least one more but i couldn t remember anyone else but there were more than dead of that i am certain the government and the procuracy don t count the people who died of fright like sick people and old people whose lives are threatened by any shock they weren t registered as victims of the sumgait tragedy and then there may be people we didn t know so many people left sumgait between march and most of them left for smaller towns in russia and especially to the northern caucasus to stavropol and the krasnodarsk territory we don t have any information on them i know that there are people who set out for parts around moscow in the periodical krestyanka woman farmer there was a call for people who know how to milk cows and for mechanics and drivers and i know a whole group of people went to help out also clearly not on our list are those people who died entering the city who were burned in their cars no one knows about them except the azerbaijanis who are hardly likely to say anything about it and there s more a great many of the people who were raped were not included in the list drawn up at the procuracy i know of three instances for sure and i of course don t know them all i m thinking of three women whose parents chose not to publicize what had happened that is they didn t take the matter to court they simply left but in so doing they didn t cease being victims one of them is the first cousin of my classmate kocharian she lived in microdistrict no on the fifth floor i can t tell you the building number and i don t know her name then comes the neighbor of one of my relatives she lived in microdistrict near the gift shop i don t know her name she lives on the same landing as the sumgait procurator they beat her father he was holding the door while his daughter hid but he couldn t hold the door forever and when she climbed over the balcony to the neighbors they seized her by her braid like the azerbaijanis were saying it was a very cultured mob because they didn t kill anyone they only raped them and left and the third one i don t remember who the third one was anymore they transferred us on march karina still wasn t herself yes we lived for days in the sk in the cultural facility and at the khimik they lived there and i lived at the city party committee because i couldn t stay with karina it was too difficult for me but i was at peace she had survived i could already walk but really it was honest words that held me up thanks to the social work i did there i managed to persevere aleksandr mikhailovich said if it weren t for the work i would go insane he and i put ourselves in gear and took everything upon ourselves someone had an infant and needed diapers and free food and we went to get them the first days we bought everything although we should have received it for free they were supposed to have been dispensed free of charge and they sold it to us then when we found out it was free we went to krayev at the time fortunately you could still drop by to see him like a neighbor all the more so since everything was still clearly visible on our faces krayev sent a captain down and he resolved the issue on march they sent two investigators to see us andrei shirokov and vladimir fedorovich bibishev the way it worked out in our family they had considered only karina and me victims maybe because she and i wound up in the hospital mother and father are considered witnesses but not victims shirokov was involved with karina s case and bibishev with mine after i told him everything he and i planned to sit down with the identikit and record everyone i could remember while everything was still fresh in my mind we didn t work with the identikit until the very last day because the conditions weren t there the investigative group worked slowly and did poor quality work solely because the situation wasn t conducive to working there weren t enough automobiles especially during the time when there was a curfew and there were no typewriters for typing transcripts and no still or video cameras i think that this was done on purpose we re not so poor that we can t supply our investigators with all that stuff it was done especially to draw out the investigation all the more so since the local authorities saw that the armenians were leaving at the speed of light never to return to sumgait and the armenians had a lot to say i came to an agreement with bibishev i told him myself don t you worry if it takes us a month or two months i ll be here i m not afraid i looked death in the eyes five times in those two days i ll help you conduct the investigation he and i worked together a great deal and i used this to shelter karina i gave them so much to do that for a while they didn t have the time to get to her so that she would at least have a week or two to get back to being her self she was having difficulty breathing so we looked for a doctor to take x rays she couldn t eat or drink for nine days she was nauseous i didn t eat and drank virtually nothing for five days then on the fifth day when we were in baku already the investigator told me how long can you go on like this well fine so you don t want to eat you don t love yourself you re not taking care of yourself but you gave your word that you would see this investigation through we need you then i started eating because in fact i was exhausted it wasn t enough that i kept seeing those faces in our apart ment in my mind every day i went to the investigative solitary confinement cells and prisons i don t know we were just everywhere probably in every prison in the city of baku and in all the solitary confinement cells of sumgait at that time they had even turned the drunk tank into solitary confinement thus far i have identified of the people who were in our apartment mamma identified three and karina two the total is marina didn t identify anyone she remembers the faces of two or three but they weren t among the photographs of those detained i told of the neighbor i recognized the one who went after the axe he still hasn t been detained he s still on the loose he s gone and it s not clear if he will be found or not i don t know his first or last name i know which building he lived in and i know his sisters faces but he s not in the city the investigators informed me that even if the investigation is closed and even if the trial is over they will continue looking for him the people i identified are largely blue collar workers from various plants without education and of the very lowest level in every respect mostly their ages range from to years there was one who was only one of them was a student he was attending the azerbaijan petroleum and chemical institute in sumgait his mother kept trying to bribe the investiga tor once thinking that i was an employee and not a victim she said in front of me i ll set you up a restaurant worth rubles and give you in cash simply for keeping him out of armenia that is to keep him from landing in a prison on armenian soil they re all terribly afraid of that because if the investigator is talking with a criminal and the criminal doesn t confess even though we identified him they tell him in order to apply psychological pressure they say fine don t confess just keep silent when you re in an armenian prison when they find out who you are they ll take care of you in short order that somehow gets to them many give in and start to talk the investigators and i were in our apartment and videotaped the entire pogrom of our apartment as an investigative experiment it was only then that i saw the way they had left our apartment even without knowing who was in our apartment you could guess they stole for example all the money and all the valuables but didn t take a single book they tore them up burned them poured water on them and hacked them with axes only the materials from the th congress of the communist party of the soviet union and james fenimore cooper s last of the mohigans oh yes lunch was ready we were boiling a chicken and there were lemons for tea on the table after they had been in our apartment both the chicken and the lemons were gone that s enough to tell you what kind of people were in our apartment people who don t even know anything about books they didn t take a single book but they did take worn clothing food and even the cheapest of the cheap worn out slippers of those whom i identified four were kafan azerbaijanis living in sumgait basically the group that went seeking revenge let s use their word for it was joined by people seeking easy gain and thrill seekers i talked with one of them he had gray eyes and somehow against the back drop of all that black i remembered him specifically because of his of his eyes besides taking part in the pogrom of our apartment he was also involved in the murder of tamara mekhtiyeva from building she was an older armenian who had recently arrived from georgia she lived alone and did not have anyone in sumgait i don t know why she had a last name like that maybe she was married to an azerbaijani i had laid eyes on this woman only once or twice and know nothing about her i do know that they murdered her in her apartment with an axe murdering her wasn t enough for them they hacked her into pieces and threw them into the tub with water i remember another guy really well too he was also rather fair skinned you know all the people who were in our apartment were darker than dark both their hair and their skin and in contrast with them in addition to the grey eyed one i remember this one fellow the one l took to be a lezgin i identified him as it turned out he was eduard robertovich grigorian born in the city of sumgait and he had been convicted twice one of our own how did i remember him the name rita was tattooed on his left or right hand i kept thinking is that rita or puma which it would be if you read the word as latin characters instead of cyrillic because the cyrillic t was the one that looks like a latin m when they led him in he sat with his hands behind his back this was at the confrontation he swore on every holy book tried to put in an armenian word here and there to try and spark my compassion and told me that i was making a mistake and called me dear sister he said you re wrong how could i an armenian raise my hand against my own an armenian and so on he spoke so convincingly that even the investigator asked me lyuda are you sure it was he i told him i ll tell you one more identifying mark if i m wrong i shall apologize and say i was mistaken the name rita is tattooed on his left or right hand he went rigid and became pale they told him put your hands on the table he put his hands on the table with the palms up i said now turn your hands over but he didn t turn his hands over now this infuriated me if he had from the very start acknowledged his guilt and said that he hadn t wanted to do it that they forced him or something else i would have treated him somewhat differently but he insolently stuck to his story no i did not do anything it wasn t me when they turned his hands over the name rita was in fact tattooed on his hand his face distorted and he whispered something wicked i immediately flew into a rage there was an ashtray on the table a really heavy one made out of granite or something very large and it had ashes and butts in it catching myself quite by surprise i hurled that ashtray at him but he ducked and the ashtray hit the wall and ashes and butts rained down on his head and back and he smiled when he smiled it provoked me further i don t know how but i jumped over the table between us and started either pounding him or strangling him i no longer remember which when i jumped i caught the microphone cord the investigator was there tolya i no longer recall his last name and he says lyudochka it s a japanese microphone please and shut off all the equipment on the spot it was all being video taped they took him away i stayed and they talked to me a little to calm me down because we needed to go on working i only remember tolya telling me you re some actress what a performance i said tolya honestly beforehand they would always tell me lyuda more emotion you speak as calmly as if nothing had happened to you i say i don t have any more strength or emotion all my emotions are behind me now i no longer have the strength i don t have the strength to do anything and he says lyuda how were you able to do that and when i returned to normal drinking tea and watching the tape i said can i really have jumped over that table i never jumped that high in gym class so you could say the gang that took over our apartment was international of the we identified there was an armenian a russian vadim vorobyev who beat mamma and azerbaijanis at the second meeting with grigorian when he had completely confessed his guilt he told of how on february the azerbaijanis had come knocking among them were guys if you can call them guys he knew from prison they said tomorrow we re going after the armenians meet us at the bus station at three o clock he said no i m not coming they told him if you don t come we ll kill you he said alright i ll come and he went they also went to visit my classmate from our microdistrict kamo pogosian he had also been in prison i think that together they had either stolen a motorcycle or dismantled one to get some parts they needed they called him out of his apartment and told him the same thing tomorrow we re going to get the armenians be there he said no they pulled a knife on him he said i m not going all the same and in the courtyard on the th they stabbed him several times in the stomach he was taken to the hospital i know he was in the hospital in baku in the republic hospital if we had known about that we would have had some idea of what was to come on the th i ll return to grigorian what he did in our apartment i remember that he beat me along with all the rest he spoke azerbaijani extremely well but he was very fair skinned maybe that led me to think that they had it out for him too but later it was proved that he took part in the beating and burning of shagen sargisian i don t know if he participated in the rapes in our apartment i didn t see i don t remember but the people who were in our apartment who didn t yet know that he was an armenian said that he did i don t know if he confessed or not and i myself don t recall because i blacked out very often but i think that he didn t participate in the rape of karina because he was in the apartment the whole time when they carried her into the courtyard he remained in the apartment at one point i was talking with an acquaintance about edik grigorian from her i learned that his wife was a dressmaker his mother is russian he doesn t have a father and that he s been convicted twice well this will be his third and i hope last sentence he beat his wife she was eternally coming to work with bruises his wife was an armenian by the name of rita the others who were detained well they re little beasts you really can t call them beasts they re just little beasts they were robots carrying out someone else s will because at the investigation they all said i don t understand how i could have done that i was out of my head but we know that they were won around to it and prepared for it that s why they did it in the name of allah in the name of the koran in the name of propagating islam that s holy to them that s why they did everything they were commanded to do because i saw they didn t have minds of their own i m not talking about their level of cultural sophistication or any higher values no education they work have a slew of children without the means to raise them properly they crowd them in like at the temporary housing and apparently they were promised that if they slaughtered the armenians they would receive apartments so off they went many of them explained their participation saying they promised us apartments among them was one who genuinely repented i am sure that he repented from the heart and that he just despised himself after the incident he worked at a children s home an azerbaijani he has two children and his wife works at the children s home too everything that they acquired everything that they have they earned by their own labor and wasn t inherited from parents or grandparents and he said i didn t need anything i just don t know how i ended up in that it was like some hand was guiding me i had no will of my own i had no strength no masculine dignity nothing and the whole time i kept repeating now you imagine that someone did the same to your young wife right before your own eyes he sat there and just wailed but that leader in the eskimo dogskin coat was not detained he performed a marvelous disappearing act but i think that they ll get onto him they just have to work a little because that vadim that boy according to his grandfather is in touch with the young person who taught him what to do how to cover his tracks he was constantly exchanging jackets with other boys he knew and those he didn t either and other things as well and changed himself like a chameleon so they wouldn t get onto him but he was detained that one in the eskimo dogskin coat was at the gambarians after aleksandr gambarian was murdered he came in and said let s go enough you ve spilled enough blood here maybe karina doesn t know this but the reason they didn t finish her off was that they were hoping to take her home with them i heard this from aunt tanya and her sons the kasumovs who were in the courtyard near the entryway they liked her very much and they had decided to take her to home with them when karina came to at one point she doesn t remember this yet this the neighbors old me and she saw that there was no one around her she started crawling to the entryway they saw that she was still alive and came back they were already at the third entryway on their way to the gambarians they came back and started beating her to finish her if she had not come to she would have sustained lesser bodily injuries they would have beat her less an older woman from our building aunt nazan an azerbaijani all but lay on top of karina crying and pleading that they leave her alone but they flung her off the woman s grown sons were right nearby they picked her up in their hands and led her home she howled and cried out loudly and swore god is on earth he sees everything and he won t forgive this there was another woman too aunt fatima a sick aging woman from the first floor she s already retired mountain dwellers and azerbaijanis too have a custom if men are fighting they throw a scarf under their feet to stop them but they trampled her scarf and sent her home to trample a scarf is tantamount to trampling a woman s honor now that the investigation is going on now that a lot is behind us and we have gotten back to being ourselves a little i think about how could these events that are now called the sumgait tragedy happen how did they come about how did it start could it have been avoided well it s clear that without a signal without permission from the top leadership it would not have happened all the same i m not afraid to say this the azerbaijanis let other worthy people take no offense the better representatives of their nations let them take no offense but the azerbaijanis in their majority are a people who are kept in line only by fear of the law fear of retribution for what they have done and when the law said that they could do all that like unleashed dogs who were afraid they wouldn t have time to do everything they threw themselves from one thing to the next so as to be able to get more done to snatch a bit more the smell of the danger was already in the air on february you could tell that something was going to happen and everyone who had figured it out took steps to avoid running into those gangs many left for their dachas got plane tickets for the other end of the country just got as far away as their legs would carry them february was a saturday i was teaching my third class the director came into my classroom and said that i should let the children out that there had been a call from the city party committee asking that all teachers gather for a meeting at lenin square well i excused the children and there were few teachers left at school altogether three women the director and six or seven men the rest had already gone home we got to lenin square and there were a great many people there this was around five thirty or six in the evening no later they were saying all kinds of rubbish up on the podium and the crowd below was supporting them stormily roaring they spoke over the microphone about what had happened in kafan a few days earlier and that the driver of a bus going to some district had recently thrown a small azerbaijani child off the bus the speaker affirmed that he was an eyewitness that he had seen it himself the crowd started to rage death to the armenians they must be killed then a woman went up on stage i didn t see the woman because people were clinging to the podium like flies i could only hear her the woman introduced herself as coming from kafan and said that the armenians cut her daughters breasts off and called sons avenge my daughters that was enough a portion of the people on the square took off running in the direction of the factories toward the beginning of lenin street we stood there about an hour then the director of school spoke he gave a very nationalist speech he said brother muslims kill the armenians this he repeated every other sentence when he said this the crowd supported him stormily whistling and shouting karabagh he said karabagh has been our territory my whole life long karabagh is my soul how can you tear out my heart as though an azerbaijani would die without karabagh it s our territory the armenians will never see it the armenians must be eliminated from time immemorial muslims have cleansed the land of infidel armenians from time immemorial that s the way nature created it that every to years the azerbaijanis should cleanse the land of filth by filth he meant armenians i heard this before that i hadn t been listening to the speeches closely many people spoke and i stood with my back to the podium talking shop with the other teachers and somehow it all went right by it didn t penetrate that in fact something serious was taking place then when one of our teachers said listen to what he s saying listen to what idiocy he s spouting we listened that was the speech of that director before that we listened to the woman s speech right then in our group there were nine of us the mood changed and the subject of conversation and all school matters were forgotten our director of studies for whom i had great respect he s an azerbaijani before that i had considered him an upstanding and worthy person if there was a need to obtain leave we had asked him he seemed like a good person so he tells me lyuda you know that besides you there are no armenians on the square if they find out that you re an armenian they ll tear you to pieces should i tell them you re an armenian should i tell them you re an armenian when he said it the first time i pretended not to hear it and then he asked me a second time i turned to the director khudurova and said that it was already after eight i was expected at home and i should be leaving she answered no they said that women should stay here until ten o clock and men until twelve stay here there was a young teacher with us her children were in kindergarten and her husband worked shifts she asked to leave i left my children at the kindergarten the director excused her when she let her go i turned around said good bye and left with the young teacher the azerbaijani i didn t see them after that when we were walking the buses weren t running and a crowd from the rally ran nearby us they had apparently gotten all fired up it must have become too much for them and they wanted to seek vengeance immediately so they rushed off i wasn t afraid this time because i was sure that the other teacher wouldn t say that i was an armenian to make it short we reached home then karina told of how they had been at the movies and what had happened there i started telling of my experience and again my parents didn t understand that we were in danger we watched television as usual and didn t even imagine that tomorrow would be our last day that s how it all was at the city party committee i met an acquaintance we went to school together zhanna i don t remember her last name she lives above the housewares store on narimanov street she was there with her father for some reason she doesn t have a mother the two of them were at home alone while her father held the door she jumped from the third floor and she was lucky that the ground was wet and that there wasn t anyone behind the building when she went out on the balcony there was no one there they were all standing near the entryway that building was also a lucky one in that there were no murders there she jumped she jumped and didn t feel any pain in the heat of the moment a few days later i found out that she couldn t stand up she had been injured somehow that s how people in sumgait saved their lives their honor and their children any way they could where it was possible the armenians fought back my father s first cousin armen m lives in block they found out by phone from one of the victims what was going on in town the armenians in that building all called one another immediately and all of them armed themselves with axes knives even with muskets and went up to the roof they took their infants with them and their old women who had been in bed for god knows how many months they got them right out of their beds and took everyone upstairs they hooked electricity up to the trap door to the roof and waited ready to fight then they took the daughter of the school board director hostage she s an azerbaijani who lived in their building they called the school board director and told her that if she didn t help them the armenians on the roof to escape alive and unharmed she d never see her daughter again i m sure of course that armenians would never lay a hand on a woman it was just the only thing that could have saved them at the time she called the police the armenians made a deal with the local police to go into town two armored personnel carriers and soldiers were summoned they surrounded the entryway and led everyone down from the roof and off to the side from the armored personnel carriers was a crowd that was on its way to the building at that very moment into block that s how they defended themselves i heard that our neighbors roman and sasha gambarian resisted they re big strong guys their father was killed and i heard that the brothers put up a strong defense and lost their father but were able to save their mother one of the neighbors told me that after it happened when they were looking for the criminals on march to and detaining everyone they suspected people hid people in our entryway maybe people who were injured or perhaps dead the neighbors themselves were afraid to go there and when they went with the soldiers into our basement they are supposed to have found azerbaijani corpses i don t know how many even if they had been wounded and put down there after two days they would have died from loss of blood or infection that basement was filled with water i heard this from the neighbors and later when i was talking with the investigators the subject came up and they confirmed it i know too that for several hours the basement was used to store objects stolen from our apartment and our neighbor carried out our carpet along with the rest he stole it for himself posing as one of the criminals everyone was taking his own share and the neighbor took his too and carried it home and when we came back when everything seemed to have calmed down he returned it saying that it was the only thing of ours he had managed to save raya s husband and father defended themselves the trdatovs defended themselves and so did other armenian families to be sure there were azerbaijani victims although we ll never hear anything about them for some reason our government doesn t want to say that the armenians were not just victims but that they defended the honor of their sisters and mothers too in the tv show pozitsiya viewpoint a military man an officer said that the armenians did virtually nothing to defend themselves but that s not important the truth will come out regardless so that s the price we paid those three days for three days our courage our bravery and our humanity was tested it was those three days and not the years and dozens of years we had lived before them that showed what we ve become what we grew up to be those three days showed who was who on that i will conclude my narrative on the sumgait tragedy it should be said that it s not over yet the trials are still ahead of us and the punishments received by those who so violated us who wanted to make us into nonhumans will depend on our position and on the work of the investigators the procuracy and literally of every person who lent his hand to the investiga tion that s the price we paid to live in armenia to not fear going out on the street at night to not be afraid to say we re armenians and to not fear speaking our native tongue october yerevan reference for 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
