Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Right Violations in Azerbaijan #011                  Prelude to Current Events in Nagorno-Karabakh          +-------------------------------------------------------+         |                                                       |         |   "Right, we should slaughter the Armenians!" and     |         |    "There's no need to be afraid, all of Moscow is    |         |    behind us." I even heard that: "All Moscow is      |         |    behind us." Well I watched and listened in and     |         |    realized that this was no joke.                    |         |							|         +-------------------------------------------------------+  DEPOSITION OF YURI VAGARSHAKOVICH MUSAELIAN     Born 1953    Line Electrician    Sumgait Streetcar and Trolleybus Administration     Resident at Building 4/21, Apartment 29    Block 14, Narimanov Street    Sumgait [Azerbaijan]   I spent almost all of February doing overhaul. The 27th was a short day at work, we worked until eleven or eleven-thirty and left for home. I decided to go for a short walk. I went to Primorsky Park. I walked past the Eternal Flame and saw a group of about 8 to 10 people standing there. When I had walked another 15 to 20 yards I heard the screech of automobile brakes behind me. I turned my head toward the sound. It was a light blue GAZ-24 Volga. I see that the people who were standing there have gone over to the  car. A man and a woman get out. The man is expensively dressed, in a suit, and the woman has a raincoat on. She doesn't have anything on her head, and  her hair is let down, sightly reddish hair, a heavy-set woman. They're 40 to  45 years old. They get something out of the trunk. The people start to help them. I become curious just what are they pulling out of there?  When I got up close I heard them turn something on. I didn't see what it was,  but it was probably a tape recorder. They put it on the ground near the  Eternal Flame honoring the 26 Baku Commissars and formed a tight circle around it. I ask, "What's going on?" Someone tells me, "Come listen." Well they were Azerbaijanis, I had asked in Azerbaijani. I hear appeals: "Brother Muslims, our time has come . . . " and something else along that line. I didn't understand what it was all about. I walked around the group trying to  get a look at the owner of the tape recorder. But the circle drew in tighter.  New people started coming from various directions, five here, seven there. And the comments started: "Right, we should slaughter the Armenians!" and "There's no need to be afraid, all of Moscow is behind us." I even heard that: "All  Moscow is behind us." Well I watched and listened in and realized that this  was no joke. I quietly left and went home.  Now before that at work I had heard that something was going on in Karabagh,  that there were demonstrations there. Well, people were saying all kinds of  things, but I didn't have any idea what was really going on.  My wife and son were at home, but my daughter was at my aunt's house in Baku.  I didn't say anything to my wife. We sat and drank tea. Sometime around two o'clock right behind our house suddenly there is noise, whistling, and  shouting. I looked out the window and saw a crowd. The crowd is moving slowly, like they show on TV when blacks in South Africa are striking or having a  demonstration and move slowly.  My wife asks what's going on out there. I say I don't know. I put on some outdoor clothes and went out to find out what it was all about. In the crowd people are shouting "Down with the Armenians!" and "Death to the Armenians!" I waited for the entire crowd to pass. At first they went down Narimanov Street  on the side with the SK club and the City Party Committee; then they turned  and went against the traffic--it's one way there--down the Street of the 26  Baku Commissars toward the streetcar line. I went home and told my wife there  was a demonstration going on. In fact I thought that we were having the same  kind of demonstrations that they had had in Yerevan and in Karabagh. Aside  from the things they were shouting, I was surprised that there were only young people in the crowd. And they were minors, under draft age.  My wife and son wanted to go upstairs to visit a friend, but I was kind of uneasy and said, "No, let's stay at home instead." An hour went by, or maybe  an hour and a half. Well, I wasn't keeping track of the time, I can't say exactly how long it was. I look and see another crowd on Narimanov, but now on the side with the microdistricts, the bazaar, and the Rossiya movie theater.  I put outside clothes on and went out again. There's noise, an uproar outside, and the crowd has grown. There are more people. And whereas the first time  there were individual shouts, this time they are more focused, more  aggressive. No, I think, something's wrong here, this isn't any demonstration. They would run, stop, then walk quickly and make sharp dashes, and then run  again. I was walking along the sidewalk and they were in the street. I  followed them. I was thinking I'd just watch and see. Who knew where this was  leading? We came out on Lenin Square. At the square the SK club is on one  side, and the City Party Committee is on the other. I went toward the square  and heard noise and shouting, as though the whole town had turned out. There  was some sort of a rally going on. I go closer and hear exclamations, appeals. I heard both anti-Armenian and anti-Soviet appeals. "We don't need  perestroika, we want to go on living like we have been." Now what did they  mean by "living like we have been?" The Azerbaijanis work like everyone else.  But too many people live at the expense of the government and at the expense  of others. Speculation, theft, and cheating go on all the time. And not just  in Azerbaijan, everywhere, in all the republics, but I've never seen it  anywhere else like I have in Azerbaijan.  Now at this rally someone says that they should go around to the Armenians'  apartments and drive them out, beat them and drive them out. True, I didn't  hear them say "kill them" over the microphone, I only heard "beat them and  drive them out." I stayed at the square a few minutes longer. First one, then another are going up onto the stage, and no one tries to stop the crowd. Off to the side of the crowd there were small groups of three or four people, and  I think they were MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] or State Security KGB. There were also uniformed policemen there, but I didn't see any of them try  to pacify the crowd. New people kept coming up onto the stage.  Well I had finally decided that this could end badly: This was no demonstration, and I had to protect my family.  I left the Square to return home and suddenly noticed a truck. It was next to the City Party Committee, on Narimanov Street, it stood next to the tai- lor's shop there, a low truck, and it had low, wooden panels. I see that some- thing is being unloaded, crates of some sort. I decided to go look because after all those appeals I was apprehensive and thought there might be weapons in there. They pulled the crates out onto the square, not toward the City  Party Committee, but toward the SK club. And when I went right up to them I  saw that they were cases of vodka. There were two people handing down the  cases from the bed of the truck, and on the ground there were many people, 15  to 20. They were handing them down from the truck and each case was carried  off by two people. Two people, one case of vodka. And there was a man standing right next to the truck and he was handing out roundish black lumps, maybe  about the size of a fist, maybe a little bigger or smaller. It was anasha.  When I passed next to that person, he stood with his side to me. There was  about a yard and a half between us, and two people were standing near him. He  has a package in his hand, and he's pulling out anasha and handing it out. I  have never smoked it myself. Once I tried it for fun, but I've seen a lot of  people smoke it, I've seen it many times, and I know what it is. I strolled  around and no one asked me who I was or what I was doing there.  Before I got to the Glass Bazaar I heard more howling, more warlike shouting.  I turned around and saw them running. Well I'll just keep on going like I am,  I thought. When they caught up with me I saw that they were carrying flags.  And I recognized the person who was carrying the flag on my side of the  street. He's a young guy, 21 or 22 years old. He was carrying a red flag,  which had "Ermeni oryum" written on it in Azerbaijani, that means "Death to  Armenians!" That guy used to live off the same courtyard as us. I don't really know what his name is, but I know his father very well. His father's name is Rafik; he used to be a cook, and then became head chef. He used to have a dark blue Zhiguli van, then he sold it and now he has a white Zhiguli 06. His  family, as I said, lived on the same courtyard as we did. Our building was on  Narimanov Street, and theirs was on the Street of the 26 Baku Commissars;  their apartment was in the far entryway, on the fifth floor, the door on the  left. Now Rafik's little brother lives there, and he, Rafik, I heard, got a  new apartment either in the forth or eighth microdistrict. In a word, his son  was carrying a flag that said "Death to Armenians!" I was surprised because  before this I had gotten the impression that all of this nonsense was being  done not by people from Sumgait, but by Azerbaijanis from Agdam and Kafan.  Well anyway I went home. My wife was upset. I told her, "It's OK, it'll pass,  they're young kids, they've just gotten all whooped up." Naturally I didn't  want her to get overly upset. After a while a new surge of crowd went by. And  this time they were breaking glass. I could hear it breaking, but I couldn't  see where. Well I think, here we go, the machine's in motion. They weren't  handing out that vodka and anasha for nothing. I didn't see people drinking  and smoking on the spot, but they certainly hadn't unloaded the vodka and  hashish to put in a store window!  So the thought flashed through my head that the machine was running, no one  would stop them now, they weren't even trying, although, I'll say it again,  the police were there, I saw them. And it's not just that the police weren't  breaking them up, they were joking with them, they were having a good time.  True, at the time I couldn't even imagine that under our government, our much- vaunted leadership--and I'm not afraid to say these words: so many people  died, So many women were abused, and how many abominations there were!--I  couldn't imagine that under our much-vaunted authorities, and if I were to be  specific, I would say under the much-touted authorities in our city of  Sumgait, I couldn't imagine that such things could take place.  When they started breaking glass I told my wife and son: "Let's go upstairs."  We went to our neighbors, the Grigorians, on the fourth floor. And in the  evening, when those crowds started going past again, I went outside once more. I stopped at "The Corner," a place called that right next to the bazaar. I  look and see a crowd on the run. And there, a few yards from the entrance to  the bazaar, are three respectable-looking men of around, say, 50 years old.  The crowd was running and one of the three waved with his arm and pointed  toward the bazaar. And then the whole crowd, as though it were one person,  wheeled and raced toward the bazaar. And not a soul went past those three, as  though it were off limits! Well everything got all churned up, there was more  noise, and the glass was flying again.  We spent the night at the neighbors'. My apartment was on the first floor, there was really no way to defend yourself there.  In the morning I went out to buy bread and to see what was happening in town.  On the way I saw someone hunched up, still. I never found out who it was or  what happened to him. There were 10 to 15 people standing near him. I got the  bread and on my way back, they had gathered around the person who was lying  there hunched up, sort of enclosing him; because of the way they were standing you couldn't even see him.  That was on the morning of February 28. Everyone knows the rest.     May 17, 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 161-164