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From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Subject: Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Rights Violations in Azerbaijan #024 
Message-ID: <1993May11.122514.11280@urartu.sdpa.org>
Summary: "When we finish with the Armenians, we'll go after the Russians!" 
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies
Date: Tue, 11 May 1993 12:25:14 GMT
Lines: 316

	+-----------------------------------------------------------+
	|                                                           |
	| "There's no room for Christians here!" and "When we       |
	| finish with the Armenians, we'll go after the Russians!"  |
	|                                                           |
	+-----------------------------------------------------------+

DEPOSITION OF KARINE BORISOVNA MELKUMIAN [1]

Born 1963
Teacher
Boarding School No. 1

Resident at Building 2B, Apartment 21
Block 41A
Sumgait [Azerbaijan]

This is my fate: I had everything, we were a happy family, and now, at 25,
I've become a widow, I'm left to raise my three children alone; the third, not
yet two months old, was born in Yerevan. Igor and I had thought that if it was 
a girl we would call her Raisa, after my mother-in-law, and if it was a boy, 
we'd call him Arsen, after Igor's grandfather. I had a girl, and I, without
Igor, named her Raisa, in honor of her dead grandmother.

Our family and the Melkumians had been neighbors since 1965. Igor and I grew 
up together, we were friends from childhood on. We got engaged when I was 16. 
In 1981, when I was 18, we were married. Two children were born to us in 
Sumgait. My daughter is now 6 years old, her name is Kristina, and my son,
Seryozha, is four and a half.

First I shall tell what happened on February 27. That day on my way home from 
work I passed Lenin Square, where about 1,500 people had gathered. There were 
Komsomol members there, and Pioneers [Children's organization], and there were 
both Party members and non-Party people there as well. All of them were 
shouting, "There's no room for Christians here!" and "When we finish with the 
Armenians, we'll go after the Russians!" And some even cried Out, "Death to 
the Armenians!" Absurd rumors had been circulating about town. I became 
frightened. I came home, breathless, and told about everything I had seen 
downtown. My family couldn't believe it. My father-in-law Sogomon Markovich 
Melkumian, wasn't home, he was at an Azerbaijani wedding. By eight o'clock he 
returned and had barely finished parking the car when his rear window was 
smashed with a rock. He got out of the car but there was no one there. Well I 
was telling him everything, too, and he said, "What, is there no longer any
government?" That same day Igor said, "Papa, something terrible is happening 
in the city." And he said, "We'll stay at home, no one will drive us from our 
own home."

The day passed. On February 28, that was Sunday, we didn't go out. We called 
our relatives and asked them all kinds of questions, and they all said the 
same thing. Sometime around evening they started smashing the car of an 
Armenian from the neighboring building. Ira, my brother-in-law's wife, and I 
called the police: they're wrecking a car, help. We called and called, and 
nonetheless they didn't come and they didn't do anything.

On February 29, on Monday, even though there were troops in the city, we were 
afraid to go to work. I called the school: I had the keys to the classroom. I 
told the senior teacher that he should send someone for the keys, I wouldn't 
be coming in. He agreed, and even said, "Fine, don't come in, we understand 
what's going on in town, don't come in."

Before that, on the 28th, the Ambartsumian family came over. They came to my 
father-in-law and said, "Uncle Sergey, they broke our windows, bad things are 
happening in town." Uncle Misha Ambartsumian even said, "With my own eyes I 
saw them chasing naked girls through the streets. I don't know," he said, "we 
should leave town." Well on the 29th we were already trying to decide where we 
should go, thinking we'd go to our dacha. We got a couple of bags together, 
clothes, food, the bare essentials. And then somewhere around 4:45 the 
building manager came by and said, "Uncle Sergey, the situation in town is 
bad, don't go out." My father even opened up to him and said, "Maybe we'll 
drive to the dacha, it'll be safer there." "No," he said, "it'll be worse 
there, you'll be safer at home." He said don't be afraid, if something happens 
I'll send people to save you.

After he left about 15 minutes passed and about 200 people burst into our 
courtyard. All of us were at home at the time: Igor and I and our two 
children, Ira and Edik and their daughter, my sister-in-law Ira, and my 
mother-and father-in-law. And the Ambartsumian family, there were three of 
them, Uncle Misha, Zhasmen, and their daughter Marina. Now when they started
breaking down the door I remember Edik and Igor told us, "Go in that room
and close the door. Close the door and calm the children so they won't hear
that there's anyone home." The children started crying. Suddenly Ira, my 
brother-in-law's wife, suggested, "Let's run out onto the balcony." We -- the
two daughters-in-law and the children, and Zhasmen and Marina -- raced out
onto the balcony. My sister-in-law and my mother-in-law ran in and said, 
"Quick, over to the other balcony, or they'll kill you all." We lived on the
second floor. We needed to cross over from our balcony to our neighbor's. At
first we couldn't manage it. The balcony looked onto the street. At that time
people were coming home from work, and many just stood there, watching. I 
pleaded and begged: "Please, call someone, have someone come!" I even started 
shouting. "I'll throw down the children, I'll throw them down, you catch them 
and take them somewhere, so at least the children will survive." Either they 
were afraid or . . . I don't know what. They looked as though they were 
watching a movie. Some of them started throwing stones at us. I'll say it 
again, these weren't the bandits, these were people from the other part of the 
building and from our entryway, they were just regular people, passersby. A 
bus even stopped. I remember a man's voice saying the Armenians were climbing
over to the other balcony. Ira, my sister-in-law, helped us get the children 
over there. I was pregnant, about seven months pregnant. No, it wasn't yet 
seven, it was six and a half. I climbed over too. I think Zhasmen went first; 
you know, I just don't remember it all that well. Zhasmen went first, I think, 
and Edik's wife Ira and I had the children, and they were all screaming and 
crying. My Kristina said, "Mamma, don't throw us over the balcony, we're 
afraid!" Lilia was crying, and Kristina and Seryozha were crying too. Kristina 
didn't even want to climb over. She shouted, "I'm staying with Grandmother,
I'm staying with Grandma!" She loved her grandma, more than she loved me. And 
my mother-in-law shouted, "Oh no, Kristina's still there, she's still there, 
save Kristina, too!" Ira helped us climb over, with Kristina coming last. Ira 
helped us and went back inside.

We started pounding on the neighbor's balcony door. I pounded with my fist, 
Sevil, open the door, open it, please!" She didn't open it. "No, go away, go 
anywhere, go, I'm not opening the door." She was our neighbor, we were 
friends, we never refused her anything, ever! And apparently she thought we 
were going to break the windows, and she opened the door. She opened it and 
said, "Karina, Karina, go away, go anywhere, just don't stay here, they'll 
kill us, too, because of you." I begged, "Please, at least take the children, 
we'll leave, we'll go back." "No," she said, "you have to leave." Her sons ran 
in, one had a knife. Sevil's brother, he's around 18, shouted at us: "Get out 
of here, leave, I'll kill you with this knife!" I became terrified, I took the 
children and went out in the entryway and went down a few stairs. I went down 
and heard a loudspeaker. It was in the courtyard "The Armenians must be 
killed, they've taken all the best places, all the best apartments!" One of 
them said, "Let the Armenian blood flow, none of them should survive!" When I 
heard that I went upstairs and started knocking on doors. No one opened their 
door for me! Not on the third floor, or the fourth. I couldn't see Zhasmen any 
longer. Ira came upstairs later. I even thought that they had let her stay, 
that they would save her.

My head was spinning. They were killing my family, and here I was in the next 
entryway with two children. Seryozha was four, and Kristina was five and a 
half. They were crying, "Mamma, we're scared!" They were so frightened that I 
didn't even know how to calm them, should I try to calm them or myself? It was 
awful. But on the third floor a man did open his door. I asked, "Open up, let 
me inside!" He opened the door slightly and said, "No!" "No" and that was it! 
He said it so sternly: "No!" I went up to the fifth floor. I pounded my fists 
on the door with all my might. He opened up, the man of the house, and stood 
there, looking at me. I was ready to get down on my knees. I almost did get 
down on my knees. "Please, I beg of you, at least take the children." He 
wasn't an Azerbaijani, he was a Lezgin. I don't even know how, but he let me 
inside. And when I went in, Zhasmen was already there. Two minutes hadn't 
passed when Ira and Lilia came up the stairs. Lilia was crying. He didn't want 
to open the door. And again I started pleading, "Please, open the door, it's 
our Ira and Lilia! Open the door!" And he said, "No, I'm afraid." I said again 
and again, "Please, open the door, please!" He looked at me. He looked at me 
for a long time and then opened the door after all. Ira came in with Lilia. We 
threw ourselves into each other's arms, crying. Then the man locked us into 
the bathroom. We sat there for a long time. Through the door he told us, "Calm 
the children, and calm yourselves down, too."

Calm down? This man was hiding us, but what of our family? When I was still in 
our apartment I had sensed that none of us would come out of this alive. I 
said, "Igor, Edik, let's say farewell." And Edik turned around and looked at 
me as if to say, is that some kind of joke? All the same I thought they would 
kill all of us. Igor looked at me, too . . . But it was already too late! They 
started pounding on the door, Igor was standing next to the door. Before that 
he had told us, "Go lock yourselves in that room and sit tight." He thought we 
were in the room. But before we went out onto the balcony we went to them: 
"Edik, Igor, let's say farewell." Igor didn't think we could climb over to the 
other balcony. And we did get over there, and I myself can't believe we were 
able to save ourselves.

Igor put on a helmet, and Edik had his coat on, and he put on a fur hat. All 
the men--Igor, Edik, their father, and Misha Ambartsumian--they all stood next 
to the door. They thought they would pound on it a while and leave. But from 
the other side of the door they ordered in Azerbaijani: "Open the door!" We 
were all silent, waiting. Someone outside the door said, "They're home,
they're in there, break down the door!" And I remember my father-in-law 
whispering, "They're going to break it down now, it's coming down now . . . "

He had something in his hands, I think it was a knife: if they got in, we were 
going to defend ourselves. In the hall near the door there were two metal 
chair legs. From outside the door they said, "We're counting to five, open 
up!" But we were all quiet, we didn't answer them. We made like no one was 
home. We figured they'd leave, they'd get tired and leave. My father-in-law 
had said, "It's not possible they'd come into my home. How can that be? 
Everyone knows us, all of Sumgait knows our family, we are on good terms with 
everyone." And indeed a day did not pass that there wasn't an Azerbaijani 
guest at our table. We had a nice dacha, everyone would get together there 
often, Azerbaijanis liked being with us there too. But now we had to save 
ourselves, we had to flee from our own home. Ira, I remember, said, "I'm not 
leaving here, my brothers and my parents are here, I'm going to fight 
alongside them." That's just what she said. She picked up a knife and said, 
"If they open the door and come into the apartment then I'm going to fight 
alongside my family, I'm not going anywhere."

We were at Sevil's when they broke into our apartment. We heard fighting and 
shouting. The noise was terrible. And when we hid upstairs on the fifth floor 
at the Lezgin's apartment, you could hear everything up there, too. Even Ira's 
voice. I remember her calling her mother several times. She called her for a 
long time . . . I started pounding on the door in the bathroom: "Open the 
door, what are they doing to Ira, who's shouting, that's Ira shouting, that's 
her voice!" But the Lezgin said, "It's nothing, calm down, no, it's not in 
your apartment." He was lying to me so I'd calm down. Two hours went by and 
the Lezgin opened the door and said, "Karina, Igor got away, calm down. He ran 
away." He saw Igor break away and run off with his own eyes. They killed him 
outside, next to the building.

While we were in the bathroom I experienced every possible human terror. The 
way Ira shouted! She shouted, "Save me, Mamma, save me! . . . Mamma, Mamma!" 
She repeated it several times. There was a wild din. There were very many 
people there, all of them shouting, all of them bellowing, howling, 
whistling--you just can't imagine what was going on, what the roar was like.

Apparently, after they had killed Ira those murderers came into the entryway 
where we were hiding and came upstairs, all the way up to the fifth floor. I 
don't know if they were just looking for any Armenians or for us in
particular, but I think they were looking for us because when we had climbed 
over the balconies someone on the street was saying that the daughters-in-law 
were climbing over the balconies. And after we heard Ira we heard them coming 
up the stairs in the entryway and hammering on the doors. I thought those were 
our last moments, and started saying good-bye to my children, kissing them. 
They were sleeping. I woke them up: "Kristina! Seryozha, wake up!" And I tell 
Ira: "Ira, if something happens, we'll throw ourselves off the balcony." We 
were on the fifth floor. Apparently our Lezgin neighbor had opened the door 
too, because later he said, "I opened the door and told them there were no 
Armenians inside." And after they all left our neighbor went out on the 
balcony himself to see: they were gone.

We weren't friends with those Lezgin neighbors, we only knew each other from 
the building. But the people we were friends with wouldn't even consider 
hiding us.

The Lezgin let us out of the bathroom. They had a candle burning. He said, 
"Karina, there're no lights on in our block." The whole block was dark, the 
whole block! It's a huge block, too. The Lezgin said, "I'm afraid to keep
you until morning, I'm afraid of the neighbors, they might kill me for saving
you." I said, "What are you saying, we'll leave now. But we can't just leave
with the children in the middle of the night. Give us time to find somewhere
else to hide." He said, "Well OK, go look." I asked Ira, "Ira, do you want to
go?" Ira said, "No, I'll stay with the children, Karina." I said, "Fine, then
I'll go." Zhasmen and I went downstairs together. It was very dark. No one 
was in the courtyard. It was dark, pitch black. l was afraid to go out at 
after seven, Igor always met me after work and accompanied me home, I never 
went out alone. And now here I was out in the middle of the night and after a
slaughter like that, too. It was probably after eleven. Later I called the 
boarding school and my director answered. He said, "Karina, where are you?" I
didn't know, I was calling from a public phone outside and didn't know where I 
was. I got confused and hung up the receiver. From him I only found out what 
time it was, I asked him, "What time is it?" He said 11:20, I think, but I 
don't really remember. So anyway Zhasmen and I went out into the courtyard. I 
look and see what appears to be a person not far from our apartment. And there
was the smell of something burnt. I became horrified. I looked at the corpse 
for a long time. It was either Ira or Edik. I only saw one of them, Zhasmen 
grabbed my hand and squeezed it: "Hurry up, let's go . . . Hurry up, come on, 
what are you turning around for?" I turned around and saw a large truck, it 
must have belonged to the bandits, because they came to kill us in a truck 
like that. We lived in the third entryway, and that truck was next to the 
fourth. We walked quickly, holding hands. I thought, if I go to the police 
then they'll put me away. I couldn't count on them. Before I reached the 
police station I saw a military vehicle. We went over and I said, "Soldier, in 
Block 41, I don't know if they've killed people or injured them--we need to 
save them!" And he said, "Go to the police station and tell them everything." 
I said, "I'm afraid to go there, I'm afraid of them." He said, "Don't be 
afraid."

We went to the police and they wrote down the address, and the military 
vehicle went to our building. I didn't go with them, they left me at the 
police station. I gave the addresses of my mother and my brothers so that 
they'd rescue them, too. I didn't know where they were or what had happened to
them.

After a while they brought my children and Ira and Lilia. First they took us 
to the KGB, that was at two or three in the morning. Then around five they 
took us to the City Party Committee, and there were very many people there, 
very many. I was pregnant and was wearing nothing but a dress. Seryozha was 
only wearing a shirt, and Kristina had a little dress on. No coat, no boots, 
nothing! And we sat there for three whole days in the City Party Committee.

The Lezgin had told me that Igor escaped. And I thought that he was probably 
alive. But then after two and a half days, they took us, the Armenians of 
Sumgait, to Nasosny. On March 6 some people from the Central Committee came 
and told us, "Karina, Ira, we need you, come with us to the City Party 
Committee." My Mamma had come to Nasosny, and she had been looking for me for 
six days. Mama, my brothers, and my uncle. We went to the City Party Committee 
and waited there in the courtyard. I was wearing nothing but a dress, and Ira 
had only a dress on as well. There was a strong wind on March 6. An hour went 
by. And then one of the functionaries told us, "Karina, Ira, gather your 
courage. Would you like to go to the burial?" I said, "What, did they really 
kill all of them?!" He said, "Let's look." He had a long list, and he started 
reading them off: Igor Melkumian, my husband, Eduard Melkumian, my brother-in-
law, Irina Melkumian, my sister-in-law, Sogomon Melkumian, my father-in-law,
and Raisa Melkumian, my mother-in-law. He read off all their names and said, 
"Get in the car, let's go to the burial."

We buried our family. I couldn't believe it at the time, I couldn't conceive
of it or imagine it . . . And even now I think how shall I explain it to my 
children when they're older?

My children were very attached to their father and their grandfather and
grandmother. Kristina didn't love me the way she loved her grandfather and
grandmother, they spoiled her. Kristina would always announce, "My grandma is 
better than anyone!" Now, even though she is getting used to my mother, it's 
difficult for her, and once she told her: "You're a bad grandmother."

I don't know why, I asked her, "Kristina, where's Papa?" and she said, "They 
killed him." She knows, she understands it all. And recently I scolded
Seryozha severely for something, and he started shouting at me, "When Papa 
comes I'm going to tell him everything!"

July 26, 1988
Nairi Boarding House
Near the Village of Arzakan
Hrazdan District
Armenian SSR
			- - - reference - - -

[1] _The Sumgait Tragedy; Pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan,
    Volume I, Eyewitness Accounts_, edited by Samuel Shahmuradian, forward by
    Yelena Bonner, 1990, published by Aristide D. Caratzas, NY, page 318-324


-- 
David Davidian dbd@urartu.sdpa.org   | "Armenia has not learned a lesson in
S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies |  Anatolia and has forgotten the 
P.O. Box 382761                      |  punishment inflicted on it."  4/14/93
Cambridge, MA 02238                  |   -- Late Turkish President Turgut Ozal 
