From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Subject: Eyewitness Acounts of Anti-Armenian Pogroms in Azerbaijan #020
Summary: Azerbaijani Barbarians 
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 15:44:59 GMT


     Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Right Violations in Azerbaijan #020
                 Prelude to Current Events in Nagorno-Karabakh

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       | They got in and in Azerbaijani I asked them what was happening. |
       | They told me they were killing Armenians.                       |
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In Turkish Historical Revision <1992Jun18.054838.19984@ddsw1.mcs.com> via its
servile dolt hbm@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Hasan B. Mutlu) responded to <4272@unixhub.
SLAC.Stanford.EDU> vadim@thnext.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Vadim Kaplunovsky) who 
wrote:

[Vadim] The big deal was the oil-exploration machinery made in Baku -- that 
[Vadim] city was the Soviet equivalent of Houston.  I say was, because that 
[Vadim] industry went down the pipes after the pogrom of 1988 (or was it 
[Vadim] 1987?).

[(*] Where shall I begin? Here we are, almost at the end of the 20th century, 
[(*] and a whole community, the Azeri Turks of x-Soviet Armenia and Karabag, 
[(*] is facing forced assimilation, torture and murder on one hand and 
[(*] forced exodus, expulsion and genocide on the other, all because 
[(*] of their ethnic and religious background. And one should ask herself: 
[(*] is the world community really so powerless? Where are all those human 
[(*] rights advocates? Where are all the decent people? Are we going to 
[(*] let this human tragedy go on and do nothing about it? The number
[(*] of Azeris murdered by the terrorist Armenian army and its savage
[(*] gangs is increasing. On the one hand they wish to distort the truth
[(*] and on the other, they beg mercy from Turkiye.

The following is part of a series of eyewitness accounts of anti-Armenian
human rights violations -- outright barbarism -- in Azerbaijan.


DEPOSITION OF VLADIMIR YAKOVLEVICH MARUTIAN

   Born 1957
   Ambulance Driver

   Resident at Building 13, Apartment 14
   Block 42                                                                    
   Sumgait [Azerbaijan]



On the evening of the 27th, after playing hockey, somewhere around seven 
o'clock I was leaving town in my car and saw that a number of people had 
gathered. I thought there had been an accident and was going to take another 
road, but I looked and saw a mob that was breaking things and beating people. 
Two people stopped me as though nothing were happening, l hadn't yet figured 
out what was going on, they stopped my car and asked to be taken to the 
bazaar. They got in and in Azerbaijani I asked them what was happening. They 
told me they were killing Armenians. There were two of them, and I was silent.
I'm driving along and they say that the Armenians were selling potatoes at the
bazaar and they chased the Armenians all away. I see one of our ambulances, 
and they're smashing it, too. I dropped them off and drove home quickly and 
parked the car in the lot.

My shift started on the morning of the 28th. On the road I saw that all the
booths there were broken: a newspaper kiosk, an Armenian had worked there; the
boot repair booths; and the beverage and juice place. When I got to work they 
told me, "The Armenians are supposed to go home, they're not being allowed to 
work." I say, "What do you mean, go home, just why should I go home? I'm 
supposed to work today." "I'm telling you go home! That's it!" Well I got my 
family and went to my father's place. He lives in Block 3, Building 5, 
Apartment 27. There's a good view of the square from there. We heard shouts 
and cries: "We won't give up Karabagh!" and "Armenians get out of here!" A 
woman was speaking and she started shouting, "They're stripping, raping, and 
killing our people. Aren't you men? They're killing our people and you're here
not doing anything!"

We went to bed. Imagine, that night we didn't hear a thing, just dogs barking.

The next morning Father went to work, I was still in bed, it was 8:10. My wife
woke me up, crying: "Get up, they've set our building on fire!" Well, kind of 
jokingly I said, "Well so what, they've set the building on fire." My father 
was standing downstairs, crying and calling my name: "Come downstairs." He had
come back with one of his pals, an Azerbaijani. He had gone to work and they 
asked him, "Is Vladimir alive?" He says, "Just what do you mean alive? He 
spent the night at my place." They told him, "His building was set on fire." 
And so my father came to get me. So we went to my place. I see that all the 
windows are broken, the curtains are lying on the ground, the children's 
things, our things, the couch, the mattresses everything is on the ground 
outside, much of it is burned. The building manager was standing there. We 
went upstairs to the apartment and the door was broken down, we went inside
. . . well you certainly couldn't call it an apartment any longer, everything 
was smashed. And the tape recorder, my coat, and many other things were gone 
completely. Well I thought we'd go report it, not touch anything so they could
take fingerprints. We went to the City Party Committee and it was so crowded 
you could barely get in. There were so many Armenians, it was packed, there 
were even people in their slippers, some had fled there right from work. The 
family of a friend of ours had fled there during the night; her small daughter
was wearing nothing but a jump suit, and the neighbor was wearing only a robe.
She was crying. People started shouting, "Give us an airplane to Yerevan! We 
don't want to live here! Let us leave!" And the authorities were trying to 
calm people down: "Everything will be fine, everything will be all right."

There were many beaten and injured people among them. I ran into Valya, she's 
my third cousin. She was crying: "They killed mother." My mother-in-law, that 
is [apparently Emma Grigorian]. And the people in charge were walking among 
us, addressing us as akhper [literally "brother," Armenian equivalent to 
"buddy"] in Armenian. "I'm not your brother!" one man said, "They raped my 
wife and my child, you're no brother of mine! How am I supposed to go on 
living?!" Everyone was in a panic, the feeling of terror had not yet subsided.

My father and I went home and my children were shouting, "Germans! Germans! 
They're killing us!" I hid them under the bed. I tell my father, "Let's get 
out of here, let's get out of here," I say, "Let's go to Yerevan."

We went upstairs to see some Armenian neighbors: "Let's all go together." And 
our neighbor said, "No, everything will calm down." I say, "It's dangerous to 
stay here." He says, "So they set a building on fire, nothing all that bad's 
happening, and if they killed someone it was probably accidental."

We went to get my aunt's family, she's my father's sister, I knock and no one 
comes to the door. I shout, "Aunt, Aunt, it's me, Vova!" And only then did 
they open up. My aunt said that the neighbors, Valerik and Alik Avanesian, had
been killed. I had known Alik well. And even though my aunt was trembling with
fear, she refused to leave: "They'll kill us on the way . . . " A neighbor of 
mine, Boris Abramian, lived there. Borya and I had been classmates together,
and he and I decided to leave town together.

I got the car from the lot. I drove right up to the entryway with Boris
behind me in his car; he had gotten his whole family. My family was getting
ready to get in the car and my father's neighbor shouted, "Hey, Armenians,
where are you running off to? I'm going to kill all of you!" He raced toward
us. I had an axe wrapped up in a rag, for self-defense. I pulled out the axe,
and my father got a tire iron. The neighbor's daughter--the neighbor's name
is Adyl Shafiyev--threw herself between us and cried, "Papa, don't!" And he
shouted, "I'm going to kill them!'' Other neighbors were standing there as
well. I thought, if he attacks us and I kill him, the rest of them will come 
at us. But the neighbors seized him. Normally he was scared to death of me,
but now . . . Anyway, he broke away and fell down and smashed his face bloody,
and became completely enraged. My family was already in the car, and I started
off. He went at Borya. Borya stepped on the gas and was going to crush him 
against the wall with the car, but at the last second managed to restrain 
himself. We left. We filled our tanks in Nasosny and drove to Derbent without
stopping. We were stopped twice by the State Motor Vehicle Inspectorate to see
who we were, and went on. There were nine people in my car--nine people in a 
Moskvich! Four of them were children. There was a nursing infant, only eight 
months old, he was crying and had to be fed, and we hadn't brought much of 
anything with us. When we got to Derbent there were no vacancies at the hotel.
As it turns out, there were other Armenians from Sumgait there already. What 
could we do? We drove on. Anyway, by morning we arrived in Orjonikidze, and 
were going to take the Georgian Military Highway to Armenia. The road was 
closed, they weren't letting anyone through because of landslides. We went to 
Pyatigorsk. We passed Borya there. We left the car with relatives there and 
went to Armavir. From there we took a train to Yerevan, to our Armenia.

How happy we were on the way--it was over, thank God we were alive and well, 
we had escaped. But getting out of Sumgait! Right when we were leaving some 
150 people tried to cut off the road ahead of us. They guessed that we were 
Armenians. We were lucky, there were armored personnel carriers there, and we 
just raced between them at an insane speed. There were probably no more than 
two feet between my car and the armored personnel carrier.

On April 9 the investigative group from the USSR Procuracy summoned me to 
Sumgait in conjunction with the case of the pogrom of my apartment. In Sumgait
people asked, "How are things in Yerevan? Have they revoked the curfew yet? 
They say no one is even going to work there." They had no idea of what was 
happening in Armenia, false rumors were making the rounds in Sumgait. Copies 
of "Emotion and Reason" [a provocative anti-Armenian article printed in Pravda
(March 21, 1988) and reprinted in Kommunist Sumgaita] was plastered up on 
walls and store windows throughout the city. But the city was dead. I met only
two Armenians there, and even that was in the military registration and 
enlistment office, and they too were completing their paperwork so they could 
leave. The Azerbaijanis were saying that the events were a wind, and that the 
wind had passed through, some wave had passed through, and was gone, it was 
over, and now everything would be quiet and fine, nothing more would happen.

   April 15, 1988
   Yerevan


		     - - - reference - - -

[1] _The Sumgait Tragedy; Pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan,
    Volume I, Eyewitness Accounts_, edited by Samuel Shahmuradian, forward by
    Yelena Bonner, 1990, published by Aristide D. Caratzas, NY, pages 282-284


-- 
David Davidian dbd@urartu.sdpa.org "It has been ever thus in all things, son, 
SDPA Center for Regional Studies    Whatever we thrash we give to the wind, 
P.O. Box 382761                     We too have been blown by the world's wind
Cambridge, MA 02238                 The chaff is gone but the grain remains." 
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