The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia issued a statement on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Maragha.
“Thirty years ago, on 10 April 1992, the armed forces of Azerbaijan carried out a massacre of the civilian population in the village of Maragha in the Martakert region of Artsakh, unprecedented in its cruelty, as a result of which the Armenian settlement, with a population of about 5,000, was completely depopulated.
The war crimes committed in Maragha have been documented in the reports of international human rights organisations, including the human rights organisations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which testify that as a result of the crimes committed against Armenians, 50 people were brutally killed, including 30 women, and 29 women and 9 children were taken hostage, of whom the fate of 19 people remains unknown to this day.
The Maragha massacre, which became a continuation of the pogroms of Armenians organised in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku, was another manifestation of the policy of hatred and ethnic cleansing against Armenians by the Azerbaijani authorities.
The impunity of the organisers and perpetrators of the massacres of Armenians in the Armenian-populated cities of Azerbaijan and in Nagorno-Karabakh, their glorification and the policy of Armenophobia pursued over the years became the basis for the commission of new mass crimes.
At present, the continued targeting of the Armenian civilian population in Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani armed forces and actions aimed at creating a humanitarian crisis, as well as the incursion since 24 March of this year into the zone of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping forces, as a result of which more than 400 people were forcibly displaced, testify to the real intention of official Baku to subject Artsakh to complete ethnic cleansing.
Today we pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Maragha massacres. The Republic of Armenia reaffirms its commitment to ensuring the right of the people of Artsakh to a free, secure and dignified life in their homeland, and emphasises the urgency of the efforts of the international community to prevent threats to the existential security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” the statement said.
