Sumgait events were thoroughly planned

Sumgait events were planned by the Soviet Azerbaijan’s leadership, as well as by special services of Turkey and the West to destabilize the situation in the USSR and to help Azerbaijan come out of the Soviet Union, Head of the Shushi Charitable Foundation Bakur Karapetyan told a news conference.

According to him, Azerbaijan’s leadership had thoroughly planned the pogroms which were approved by some representatives of Soviet Russia’s ruling elite. The aim of the pogroms, in B. Karapetyan’s words, was to force Armenians out of Azerbaijan and to instigate instability in the Transcaucasus. B. Karapetyan drew this conclusion while shooting a documentary on the Sumgait pogroms.

B. Karapetyan spent 8 days Sumgait, in late March, 1988. The 54-minute film titled “Sumgait Waves” features evidence of eye witnesses, the places where the pogroms of Armenians took place.

Bakur Karapetyan stressed that Azerbaijan’s propaganda machine has been constantly trying to lay the blame on Armenia by telling stories about alleged Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes in Kapan preceding Sumgait pogroms, but facts and evidence testify that indeed “Sumgait events were thoroughly planned.”

This documentary was banned by the Soviet authorities, however, after the collapse of the USSR the film was screened both in Armenia and abroad.