Tbilisi commemorates Sumgait victims
On February 27, the RA Embassy in Georgia and the Georgian-Armenian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church organized an evening entitled "Confronting History: Sumgait, Khojalu..."
Before the main event, a mass requiem in memory of the innocent victims of Sumgait, Baku and Maraga was held at the Holy Etchmiadzin Church (St. Gevorg Church of Etchmiadzin) in Tbilisi.
Then, representatives of different cultural and non-governmental organizations of Georgia participated in a commemorative event held at the "Hayartun" Cultural Center with an opening speech by RA Ambassador to Georgia Hovhannes Manukyan. In his speech, the Ambassador particularly mentioned the fair and legitimate claim of the people of Artsakh for self-determination; the intolerance and lack of constructivism of Azerbaijan starting from the days of the Karabakh movement; the massacres perpetrated under the patronage and with the permission of the Soviet Azerbaijani authorities in the late 1980s; the distortion of facts and defamation; Azerbaijan's destructive approaches in the current process of negotiations and its anti-Armenian propaganda.
In his speech, Prelate of the Georgian-Armenian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Father, Bishop Vazgen Mirzakhanyan gave a brief historical background and touched upon the need of tolerance in inter-ethnic relations and voiced hope that reason would win and that the ultimate goal of everlasting co-existence in the Caucasus would turn into a reality.
The event featured screenings of parts from a documentary about the events that took place in Sumgait, and community figure Yenok Tadevosyan gave a historical background to the events.
During the second part of the event, the participants touched upon the events of Khojalu, Baku's distortion of the real facts and the propaganda on that. Historian Karen Oganesyan gave commentaries and parts from the documentary about the real image of the events of Khojalu were also shown.
The event ended with a speech by well-known Georgian writer, publicist Givi Shahnazar.
After the event, the RA Ambassador gave interviews to Georgian mass media representatives, reports the MFA press service.
