By Sargis HATSPANYANRepresentative of the Armenian Diaspora
Yerevan
“What is not comprehended by us cannot become ours”
Goethe
The thought of the famous German philosopher is an excellent formula, reflecting the conformism of the most countries of the world and even our position on the Artsakh problem. With the view of the universal improper attitude to the issues of human rights, freedom, equality, fraternity, democracy, self-determination of nations and all the rest, it is possible to point out that the Artsakh problem is considered in the light of Goethe’s words – it is not comprehended, because it does not belong to us. The reason why it so is, probably, a topic for a special article, but it is just such an attitude of the Armenianhood and most of the Diaspora that makes me touch this issue.
The Armenian Diaspora has mainly emerged because of the Genocide of the early 1900’s, the most horrible consequence of which was that the whole nation lost its homeland. In 1991-1994 Azerbaijanis did not go far from their kinsmen Turks: they tried to do in Artsakh what took place in the Western Armenia and Cilicia in 1915-1923. But the local population, which having learned the lessons of the past well, thanks to their vigilance thwarted the criminal plans. The notion “to learn the lessons of history” is not the best characteristics of what happened, but even that is enough to describe out mistakes of the last 17 years.
The knowledge about the psychology of the people, who have become victims of the same crime, and providing support to each other is not enough to understand the lack of such support between two parts of the Armenian people, who suffered the same hardships. The descendants of the people, who were deprived from the homeland in 1915 and found themselves in various parts of the planet, in 1980’s failed to present our problem as a crime against humanity, to let the world aware of it and make it empathizing with the whole pain of Artsakh.
It is unclear why the Diaspora has got an inert attitude in the propagandist war, imposed by the enemy, instead of telling the world about the Artsakh problem based on its own unfortunate experience. As far as the pro-Armenian work has not been done among the public and, especially, the governmental and political circles in the United States, Russian Federation and France, we also have been unable to learn the lessons from how our enemy, lacking Diaspora, succeeded in using all propagandistic opportunities and impose the lie, having nothing to do with the reality, to the world.
The descendants of the people, who lost Van, Mush, Bitlis, Kars and Karin, have been unable to attract the attention of the world community to the fact that the fates of the people in small Artsakh were under the same threat, they failed to actualize the issue of the occupied Shahumian region, as a repetition of the crime of 1915. We must admit it, trying to grasp the mistakes and, finally, learn the lessons from our own history.
I think that our activities and measures to be taken to improve the situation should be based on the parallels between the events of the early 1900’s and what happened in Artsakh in the end of 1980’s. The use of this method will allow to spread the healthy appeal “Never again!” (Plus jamais ça!) all over the world and step forward. So this will urge the humanity to treat the problem of the geographical division of two parts of one people, which have faced the same crime in various periods of time, as displays of one problem.
It should be the major and priority component part of the agenda of the politically mature part of the Armenian Diaspora, which will lead to discussing of new circumstances and realities, instead of the missed opportunities. As a result, favorable conditions will emerge to improve the stagnated Armenian political thought.
The best criterion for the objective evaluation of the way that has been passed is to determine the coefficient of the effectiveness for each taken step. And in this sense, after the objective examination, there is a need in weighing the dark and light periods of our history. We should be honest first of all with ourselves, and then we will be able to determine just the mentioned coefficient, which is the main factor of our improvement.
However, for this, in order that the relations between Artsakh and Diaspora become constant and develop, it is necessary to achieve the rise of the public and political self-consciousness and democratization. Conditions for the joint implementation of the national projects are required to solve numerous goals of Artsakh. This means that everything depends on us, and available external forces cannot negatively impact on that process. So only the all-mighty time will show whether we are able to set up a dialog with the half of our “I” in the nearest future and act jointly or not. We have no right to lose time, which is very well used our enemies very well.
