First Nagorno-Karabakh War
However, Armenia claimed that Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh endured discrimination by Azerbaijanis, who also neglected the region, although the living standard there was high, compared with other mountainous regions in the Soviet Union. On 13 February 1988, Karabakh Armenians held a political rally in the Lenin Square in Yerevan, joined by several hundred people, and called for the affiliation of the region to Armenia. This political rally was held at the same time when a delegation of Karabakh Armenian artists and writers who visited and petitioned Moscow returned. Those demonstrators chanted "Unity!" in Armenian ("Miatsum!"), which was a single-word slogan of their campaign. This incident intensified antagonism among Azerbaijanis living in Nagorno-Karabakh, which accounted for about 25% of the population, and Azerbaijani residents of Shusha, which is a neighboring town of Stepanakert and 90% of the town's total population were Azerbaijanis, started to establish counter-protests.