We Are Guilty Collectively: If We Do Not Act Now for Artsakh, Then When?

By Dr. Arshavir Gundjian C.M.

Special to the Mirror-Spectator/Abaka

I can hardly imagine that there is today a single conscious Armenian, aware of the desperation of the blockaded population of Artsakh, who does not develop a profound feeling of helplessness and guilt.

Let us realize that while facing such a calamity, for all practical purposes, we are sitting idle and are not participants in any meaningful shape or form in any consequential activity of help to some 120,000 of our brothers and sisters, children, adults, sick or elderly, subjected to an open and obvious act of genocide in their ancestral homeland.

The so-called civilized world, from East to West, is playing a game of ineffective and half-hearted meetings, declarations, resolutions, and appeals, all directed to an unrepentant Azerbaijan and its leader Ilham Aliyev who openly and blatantly makes a joke of all such manifestations.

Aliyev is pursuing an obvious and vengefully sadistic strategy, consisting of subjecting an entire population to a slow process of strangulation, until it inevitably gives up and accepts defeat, followed by a historically demonstrated and predictable process of physical ethnic elimination.

Dear fellow Armenians across the world, including our motherland Armenia, facing this tragedy that a precious part of our nation is living through, let us have the courage to first ask ourselves, including the Armenian authorities, all organizations, and individuals of the diaspora across the globe, the following inevitable question, and then equally have the courage to answer honestly: Have we so far pulled together all our means and forces together, to rush to the rescue of our nation?

The resounding answer to this unforgiving question, is an embarrassingly negative and very clear NO.

To emphasize further this embarrassing answer, let me ask further, today, as we have some eight million or more Armenians comfortably living across the world, in a resourceful diaspora, and a fully independent motherland Armenia, which itself is a full-fledged member of the United Nations organization, as we allow ourselves to remain in this sinful insensitive lethargy, how dare we blame the so called “civilized world” back in 1915, for not having lifted a finger to help our ancestors and save them from the genocidal hands of these same Turkish murderous hangmen?

Fellow Armenians, we need urgently and without delay, collectively to stand up and be counted for effective and forceful actions that we must be taking without delay, to come to the rescue of our Artsakhtsi population.

Never mind those endless “top level meetings,” involving Nikol Pashinyan, Aliyev, Charles Michel or whoever, which do not provide any medicine or food to the sick and starving Artsakhtsis. We just learned that after the last such inconclusive meeting in Brussels on July 15, there is again a sheepish next one being planned in the fall in Grenada.

This amounts simply to an international shameless abuse of credibility to which Armenians are continuing to be subjected!

Facing this national genocidal calamity, we in the diaspora must come up with an ad hoc pan-Armenian (hamahaygagan) action mechanism led by all historically recognized major national organizations, but in which any and all legally structured organizations will be welcome to participate.

This is a challenge where facing a national calamity we can show our national maturity by putting aside all internal political, denominational, or other differences. All our church structures, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, all political and philanthropic organizations, the Armenian Assembly and like organizations must be made to feel part of this action group, which may simply be called “The International Pan-Armenian Save Artsakh Movement.”

Of course, we recognize, and I personally am fully aware of, the enormous logistic difficulties that such an action will face. The challenge is to find the way to overcome and circumvent such difficulties in view of the enormity of the calamity.

The main but not sole practical purpose of such a movement ought to be to generate such a strong international informational wave in all major countries where the diaspora has a foothold, that the Azerbaijani genocidal process in Artsakh becomes part of the daily news reports, just at par with the news of the Ukrainian war, and certainly to eradicate the continuing Azerbaijani-generated language of qualifying the Artsakhtsis as the culprit “separatists in Azerbaijan.”

With equal strength and emphasis, the International Pan-Armenian Save Artsakh Movement must demand of our own Armenia’s authorities to immediately engage in an urgent and intense international states level action in favor of the Artsakhtsis, starting with the insistent and repeated request of the UN Security Council to intervene, if need be with the help of an international military or police force, to open immediately the Lachin (Berdzor) corridor.

Dear fellow Armenians, and especially leaders of our identifiable major Armenian diasporan organizations, let us take shortcuts and start to communicate together without delay in order to start this process immediately

This action will first, invariably give hope to our Artsakhtsi brothers and sisters, and much more importantly, it will effectively bring international justice and especially prevent a humanitarian major criminal plot from taking place.

Dear fellow Armenians, this is a national emergency. Many excuses can readily be raised to prevent the above process from being brought into existence. However, they all fade to total irrelevance in view of the enormity of the crisis that is being faced right at this moment, by our nation.