Armenpress News Agency, Armenia Saturday Sumgait pogroms must be shifted to int'l legislative arena, says sociologist YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 24, ARMENPRESS. The fact of the large scale massacres of Armenians in 1988 committed by Azerbaijani authorities in Sumgait, Azerbaijan must be shifted to the international legislative arena, sociologist Aharon Adibekyan, director of the Sociometer Sociological Center said at a press conference. “Armenia must shift the fact of the Sumgait Pogroms to the international legislative arena in order for it to be evaluated as genocide organized against Armenians in the end of the 20th century. It will also have a preventive nature for such countries, and Armenia will receive moral compensation”, Adibekyan said. According to him, the Azeri state sanctioned massacres of Armenians in Sumgait were directed against the Karabakh Movement. “The Sumgait pogrom was Azerbaijan’s response to the Karabakh struggle, an attempt to intimidate Armenians,” Adibekyan said. He mentioned that this resulted in 400,000 people emigrating from Azerbaijan. “Nearly 200,000 from them moved to Armenia”, he said. Soviet troops were brought into Sumgait at the next day of the pogroms, and according to official data nearly 300 soldiers were wounded. “Imagine the scale of the pogroms if a division suffered that many wounded,” he said. English –translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan