The following remarks were delivered at the AYF Washington DC “Ani” Chapter’s “Service to the Community and Homeland” event, marking the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Youth Federation, held on December 9, 2023. Sune Hamparian recently completed a summer internship at the Yerevan office of human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan, organized through the Armenian Legal Center.
It was in this church, this very hall, among so many of you gathered here today, that I first heard the human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan. The 44-day Artsakh War still fresh in my mind, I felt at that time what I think a lot of us felt—hopeless. As larger and more powerful forces attacked our lands, we watched the rest of the world stand silent to the atrocities our people faced. Each day brought knowledge of new tragedies, unable to prevent the crimes we were presented with each and every day.
Siranush seemed to be the light in the darkness. A candle in the night. In this hall, hearing Siranush talk, I felt for the first time that someone was answering my midnight questions. How could justice possibly be found? She talked about the prisoners of the Artsakh War. For the first time, I heard all the facts, the cruel truth, the reality on the ground. I remember listening, enraptured by her words, jotting down each and everything that she said. Not only did I see the problems more clearly, but I saw a course through which action could be taken—international courts. Siranush, with the support of the Armenian Legal Center, was not one of the people who idly stood by and watched. She stepped up to the plate and found a way to change the situation.
The opportunity to work with Siranush was the highlight of summer and will continue to inspire me throughout the rest of my life. During the war, she started the process of taking human rights violations to the international courts. She collected evidence, from video recordings to individual accounts, sifting through and purposefully putting herself in front of the cruelest aspects of humanity, each day hearing the painstaking accounts and visuals of tortured, mutilated and murdered individuals.
In the time between that first meeting and the internship, Siranush became my idol—and not some distant icon, a movie superhero—but a real hero, a human hero, an Armenian hero. I hoped to be just like her, but that’s easier wished for than accomplished.
When I first began the internship, reading through the collections of evidence tore me down. Some nights I didn’t know what to do but cry. The stories of each soldier stayed with me. Their lives stayed with me. Their service, their sacrifice, their suffering. Their age, the same as mine, but their lives so vastly different.
Siranush’s strength, her power and her perseverance pushed me to continue the work, to understand that while it was hard, getting to know each soldier was necessary to deliver the justice they deserved and that each of their families so desperately needed.
I’m not a lawyer. But through the internship, working with Siranush, and with the help of law students, I was able to play a part in that justice. I learned to turn the evidence I had spent so much time reviewing into structured evidence and draft case summaries. I studied laws here in the U.S. to learn about sanctions as a possible remedy.
Through the entire process, I learned there are ways. There are countless ways we can help, whether that is through going to a protest, pressuring members of Congress, doing service projects or writing a case summary. Because each of us is part of the solution. Each of us a single candle that together lights the night. And when the path ahead is not clear, when there is no way, we make a way.
Because Երբ չի լինում ելք ու ճար, խենթերն են գտնում հնար.
Sune Hamparian
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