ARF Dashnaktsutyun parliamentary group leader Vahan Hovhannisyan met Monday with N 187 school senior students to conduct an model lesson on the 1990 Armenian pogroms in Baku.
“Over the past years, there’ve been a number of blunders in Armenia’s policy regarding the Karabakh conflict settlement,” Mr. Hovhannisyan said, specifically noting the issue of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan.
“We never demonstrated the grave living conditions of our refugees to foreign guests, but this doesn’t mean that refugees experience no problems,” he said, adding that, as opposed to Azerbaijan, Armenia never tried to cash in on this tragedy.
At the same time he emphasized that, Armenia has to raise two issues in Karabakh talks: Azerbaijan’s aggression in response to free expression will of Karabakh people, and indemnity to Armenian refugees.
The Azerbaijani authorities instigated the Armenian pogroms in Baku 20 years ago. Some 400 Armenians were killed and 200 thousand were exiled in the period of January 13-19. The exact number of those killed was never determined, as no investigation was carried out into the crimes.
On January 13, a crowd numbering 50 thousand people divided into groups and started “cleaning” the city of Armenians. On January 17, the European Parliament called on EU Council of Foreign Ministers and European Council to protect Armenians and render assistance to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. On January 18, a group of U.S. Senators sent a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev to express concerns over the violence against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan and called for unification of Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia.
