International Herald Tribune, »February events« still haunting Azerbaijani city by Bill Keller, New York Times service (author was the first western reporter allowed to visit Sumgait since the Soviet government imposed travel restrictions in the region in February) -
September 1st, pages 1-6
»They were afraid«, said Mrs. Isanyan, »whose in-laws moved to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, after the riots.«
»What they were afraid of, I don't know. No one came to our flat, no one attacked us. But, still, there was a lot of talk, and some people were afraid. They are gone, and we are still here«, the older Armenian men said.
»These events cost me half my Armenian friends«, said Khilal Verdyev, 63, a teacher at the local chemical institute. »Some of them were frightened away. Some just felt ashamed to show their faces because they know the trouble was provoked by the Armenian side.«
It is accepted wisdom among Sumgait's Azerbaijani majority that the riots on February 27, 28 and 29 were deliberatly contrived by Armenian extremists in order to discredit Azerbaijan in the battle for the world's sympathy.»We are ready to be friends«, said Mr. Verdiyev, »we have always been friends. But the friendship is not the same as it was.«
Meanwhile, city officials said 3.500 Azerbaijani refugees have moved into Sumgait from villages in Armenia, part of a larger wave fleeing what they say is continuing persecution at the hands of Armenian nationalists.
One refugee from the Masts region of Armenia, who insisted on anonimity to protect relatives she left behind, said that since the СПОРe over the Nagorno-Karagakh Autonomous Region became heated in February, Armenians have burned the houses of Azerbaijani villagers, refused to sell them food and prevent them from selling their vegetables at local bazars in an attempt to drive them back to Azerbaijan.
»You see, there are a lot of Sumgaits«, said Zulfi S. Ghadzhiev, the Communist Party leader in Sumgait since March 16. »Every Azerbaijani region of Armenia is a little Sumgait.«The refugees add new grievances to the general lore of ethnic strain.
When the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave in Western Azerbaijan, demanded early this year to be joined with Armenia, their ethnic kin in Armenia, Moscow and elsewhere took to the streets in sympathy.
In Sumgait and Baku, according to local Armenians, the cause aroused little excitement except an occasional loud argument between neighbours.
"Armenians in Baku and Sumgait tend to be quite assimilated«, said David Dilanyan, a priest at the Armenian Orthodox church in Baku who also serves many Armenians in Sumgait. »And perhaps they were afraid of a clash. Many of them actively opposed the Nagorno-Karabakh campaign. The sent telegrams to the newspapers calling for an end to the strikes and demonstrations, for peace and reason.«
Even now, everyone in Sumgait seems to know firsthand of an Azerbaijani who, likes Mr. Mamedov, sheltered Armenians neighbours during the troubles.
In hindsight, he said, one can see some simmering discontent in the city. Sumgait has such a serious housing shortage that many newcomers to the city - most of them Azerbaijanis - live in shabby worker hostels or in a crude shantytown on the outskirts.
No one quite says so, but there are hints that these people looked with some resentment on the well established population of Armenians, many of them merchants and traders, who lived in better housing.
Then, early this year, the first busloads of Azerbaijanis arrived from the villages of Armenia with their stories of Armenian abuses.
The buses pulled into the stations of Friendship Street, ashabby building dressed in peeling green paint, and disgorged the aggrieved villagers into the hand of their Sumgait relatives. A few young firebrands called for vengeance.
On February 27, after days of misleading reassurances in the press that all was calm, Radio Baku broadcast a report that seemed to confirm the worst: two Azerbaijanis had been killed in a clash near Nagorno-Karabakh.
That night a crowd of young Azerbaijanis went on a window smashing rampage.
The next night rioting boiled up again and spread out from the bus stations into streets and the five story .rtment blocks nearby.
Outside Sumgait itself, that night has become the stuff of legend. Armenians in Yerevan, Moscow and the United States insist that hundreds of Armenians were slaughtered and that the cover-up took place. If so, no one has come forth with evidence to prove it.
»Everyone wants to use the case for his own ends, to throw mud on the other side«, says Mr. Ismailov, the prosecutor.»It's hard to imagine that it could happen again«, said Takhir Mamedov, a 22 year-old Azerbaijani factory worker, who was the only one interviewed who thougth it possible that the riots could be repeated. »But if another group of extremists tries something against the Azerbaijanis nations, then everything could happen again."