The World - News from May 20, 1988

About 200,000 people reportedly gathered peacefully in a square in Yerevan in the second large demonstration in the capital of Soviet Armenia this week. An Armenian activist in the capital said that some in the crowd carried banners demanding annexation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an area of neighboring Azerbaijan that has been the focus of ethnic unrest. Dissident officials in Moscow said that about 150,000 people gathered in Yerevan on Tuesday, the day after an Azerbaijani youth who took part in ethnic violence in February was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison.