Justice will prevail

2026-03-03 - 12:54

The following remarks were delivered at the AYF-led protest in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington, D.C., held on Feb. 28, 2026, commemorating Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian massacres in Sumgait, Baku, Maragha and Kirovabad (1988-1992), along with demanding justice for the 2023 Artsakh Genocide and the release of Armenian prisoners of war. When Joseph Stalin arbitrarily placed the Armenian land, known to us as Artsakh, under Azerbaijani control, citizens of Artsakh began to protest peacefully. They protested for their dignity, for their land and for their lives, but the call for dignity was answered with decimation. Following these protests was a three-day rampage against Christian Armenians living in Sumgait. This rampage included, but was not limited to, reports of Armenians being skinned and burned alive, raped, disemboweled and mutilated. Those are just a few of the horrific acts that were done to Armenians by angry mobs, while Azeri authorities, who had the ability to stop these mobs, watched from a distance for three days. The horrific acts in Sumgait were just the start of anti-Armenian violence in the area. Civilians in Kirovabad and Baku were tortured, hunted down and threatened with genocide, something we have been subjected to for generations. Now I ask, why aren’t we angrier? This wasn’t a distant part of our history; this was just 38 years ago. This atrocity happened during your lifetime, during my parents’ lifetimes. This was a tragedy that has been pushed away while the victims of these pogroms and their families are silenced and ignored. We often focus on the trivial parts of our lives as Armenians living comfortably in our nice neighborhoods, surrounded by people who might not look twice at you. We then ignore the gritty and horrifying parts of the lives of those who came before us. The constant threat of erasure of an entire group of people should make us terrified that the events that happened in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku could happen again — but this time, it could happen to you, it could happen to us. And today, we are watching the same patterns of the pogroms 38 years ago continue in Artsakh. Hostages remain in captivity, families remain separated, and more than 100,000 Armenians have been forcibly displaced from their indigenous lands and ancestral homes. The children who left behind their toys, grandparents who left behind the graves of those they loved and churches that are now under construction as they are turned into mosques are not just statistics; it is a reality that we as Armenians must face head-on. If we do not demand justice for the crime of ripping Artsakhtsis from their homes, then we will never earn justice for the crimes committed in 1988 in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku. If we do not demand justice for the children of Artsakh who will never see their fathers again, then places like Syunik, in sovereign Armenia, will be at just as much risk of attack and colonization as our ancestors have faced for millennia. What happened in Sumgait in 1988 and later in Kirovabad and Baku were not spontaneous outbursts of anger. They were organized eruptions of hatred, fueled by propaganda and permitted by silence. When a state allows mobs to roam freely, when neighbors are marked and hunted, when law enforcement turns away instead of stepping in, that is not chaos — that is complicity. And complicity leaves scars that generations must carry. We cannot allow ourselves to become apathetic to that reality. Apathy is dangerous. Apathy tells us that these are just stories from the past, that they belong in textbooks or in whispered family memories. But the survivors are still among us. The trauma still courses through their veins. The displacement, the loss of homes and the broken communities are not abstract concepts. They are lived experiences that shaped who we are as a people. Anger, when rooted in truth, is not something to be ashamed or embarrassed about. It is a recognition that injustice occurred. It is a refusal to accept historical revisionism. But anger alone is not enough. It must be transformed into remembrance, into education and into advocacy. We must speak about these pogroms openly and unapologetically in order to demand acknowledgment and accountability. We must show up in front of the Azerbaijani embassy every year in February, not to change their minds — because we know that their minds will always be filled with hatred toward our people — but to demand that the world listen to our grievances and that the survivors of anti-Armenian violence that still occurs today know that we will never give up fighting for their reparations, even if it feels like an uphill battle. Because when atrocities are minimized or denied, they are given room to happen again, and we have seen with our own eyes in Artsakh what historical revisionism does to a group of people. History has shown us that indifference is a powerful ally to violence. If we remain silent, if we allow comfort to replace conscience, then we fail those who were murdered, those who were displaced and those who still carry the wounds of those days. So let us get angry about Sumgait. Let us get angry about Kirovabad. Let us get angry about Baku, as they were not distant tragedies but warnings. Let us honor the victims not only with our grief and rage, but with our voices. Let us be louder than denial, stronger than silence and united in the simple demand that our history be recognized and protected so that justice will prevail.