Statement Issued by the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Maragha. “31 years ago, on April 10, 1992, the armed forces of Azerbaijan carried out a planned brutal massacre of the peaceful population in the Armenian settlement of Maragha in the Martakert region of Nagorno-Karabakh. As a result, a settlement with a population of around 5,000 was completely subjected to ethnic cleansing, more than 50 peaceful inhabitants were brutally killed, and as many were captured. These data are documented in reports by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Many of those captured remain missing, and they are considered forcibly disappeared.

The Maragha massacre was a continuation of the pogroms orchestrated against Armenians in Sumgait, Ganja, and Baku, and it was yet another manifestation of the Azerbaijani authorities' massive crimes against humanity on the basis of national identity. The deliberate crimes against the peaceful population of Nagorno-Karabakh, military crimes, their impunity, and their glorification have become part of the systemic policy of Azerbaijan and took on new forms during Azerbaijan's aggression in April 2016 against Nagorno-Karabakh, and on a larger scale during the 44-day war in 2020, which also resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of Armenians from Hadrut, Shushi, and adjacent regions.

Thirty-five years after the Maragha atrocities, Azerbaijan has been unlawfully blocking the Lachin corridor, which connects Nagorno-Karabakh to the rest of the world, for nearly four months. The deliberate creation of a humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, the periodic violations of the ceasefire by the Azerbaijani armed forces and aggressive actions, as well as the ongoing targeting and terrorization of the civilian population, once again prove that Azerbaijan's aim is to subject Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing.

Today, we pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Maragha massacre. To prevent such atrocities in the future, we once again emphasize the urgency of effective actions by the international community, including the application of available international mechanisms.