Azerbaijani Embassy In Warsaw" width="262" height="161" />YEREVAN (Novosti-Armenia), March 1—The representatives of the Armenian community in Poland held a protest rally before the Azerbaijani Embassy in Warsaw on February 27, in connection with the 22-nd anniversary of the Armenian pogroms in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.

According to the information received by the “Novosti-Armenia” news agency, the relevant municipal authorities of Warsaw allowed the representatives of the Armenian community to march along the street leading to the Azerbaijani Embassy in the diplomatic quarter “Saska Kepa.”

In front of the embassy one of the old residents of the Armenian community in Warsaw, Rafael Amirian, read out a letter, taken by the demonstrators. The letter refers to the tragedy in Sumgait, quotes the condemning assessment of the contemporaries and specifies the goals of the real organizers of the pogroms. It also demands the Azerbaijani authorities to take responsibility for what has happened, and calls on the international community to condemn the atrocity, considering it as a continuation of the 1915 Genocide.

After that, Amirian, together with the head of an ethnographic group of “Musa Ler,” Hakob Baghdasaryan, in the presence of a police officer tried to deliver a letter to the representative of the Azerbaijani embassy, who refused to accept it, saying that he does not speak the Polish language. However, the demonstrators managed to drop the letter into the mailbox of the Embassy.

In accordance with the tradition that has developed over the recent years, on that same day the representatives of the Armenian community gathered in the courtyard of the Armenian Embassy in Warsaw, where the candle lighting ceremony took place near the cross-stones there. The priest Arthur Avdalyan — the spiritual leader of the Armenian Catholic Church — said a prayer for the innocent victims of the Sumgait massacre.

Later the Ambassador of Armenia in Poland, Ashot Galoyan, addressed the audience. He spoke on the Sumgait tragedy and the attempts by the Azerbaijani side to distort the history of the Karabakh movement.

The Ambassador stressed that the protest rally in front of the Embassy of Azerbaijan is clear proof that the Armenian community, scattered all over the world, has not forgotten anything and is ready to rebuff the false propaganda of Azerbaijan and all the anti-Armenian provocations.

On February 26-29, 1988, with the actual support of the Azerbaijani authorities and with the tacit connivance of the leadership of USSR in the Armenian town of Sumgait (Azerbaijan SSR), there were massive pogroms of Armenians, during which, according to official figures, 32 were killed and hundreds of Armenians were injured. Within a few days 14,000 Armenian residents of Sumgait left the city.

Translated from Russian by Yerevan Report