WASHINGTON – Over 50 Armenian activists and leaders from across the country traveled to Washington, D.C. on March 12, 2024 for ANCA Eastern Region Advocacy Days to urge support for a broad range of legislative priorities in Congress, including ending U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan, sanctioning Azerbaijani officials, ensuring Artsakh Armenians’ right of return and releasing Armenian prisoners of war.
At Advocacy Days, young people lead the way. As young activists, ranging from high school students to recent college graduates, gathered at the ANCA office in D.C. to prepare for their meetings on Capitol Hill, ANCA-ER Board Chair Dr. Ara Chalian felt both the energy and trepidation in the room. Several of the young activists expressed how nervous they felt. In brief remarks, Chalian encouraged the group to embrace their right as members of a democracy to express their voices.
“It’s hard to talk about the fact that the odds are against us. If we don’t fight, we have nothing. If we don’t embrace what’s in front of us, if we choose not to be on the Hill, there’s no battle,” Chalian later reflected in a conversation with the Weekly.
Over the course of the next day, young Armenians, many of whom had never sat in a congressional meeting, converged on the Hill. In a day-long schedule of meetings in the Senate and House of Representatives, they faced their fears, articulated complex legislative issues and held the attention of the nation’s leaders.
“I strongly believe that we deserve to dream of an independent Artsakh and united Armenia. We have a hard time accepting that it’s okay to dream, but it’s things like what we saw, young people advocating on the Hill, being confident and developing skills while delivering key messages along with other advocates and leaders,” Chalian said.
Young activists who return to Advocacy Days each year feel their progress as public speakers and civic leaders. When Sosy Bouroujian, member of the ANCA-ER Board, participated in Advocacy Days for the first time six years ago, ARF Eastern U.S. Central Committee member George Aghjayan encouraged her to take the lead in a meeting with her representative. “I was so nervous,” recalled Bouroujian, who now serves as the chair of the ANC of Virginia. “Most people don’t get to experience walking the halls of Congress, running into members and talking to them about something we’re passionate about. It had an impact on me and made me want to get more involved.”
For some of the young activists, Advocacy Days provide their first encounter with politics and a glimpse into a potential career. For others, Advocacy Days are an outlet outside of school or their day jobs to channel their desire to effect change for Armenian issues. 23-year-old Jero Mouradian works in finance while pursuing his passion for politics through ANCA programs, including Advocacy Days and Rising Leaders. “I would be remiss not to take this opportunity and advocate for my people in this intense time of struggle,” Mouradian told the Weekly in between congressional meetings. “The things we do here have impactful, actionable change for our homeland. Because I feel this having an impact, that’s why I continue coming.”
Advocacy Days are also a training ground for future generations of Armenian leaders. For Nairi Diratsouian, Director of Legislative Affairs and Community Relations at the ANCA-ER, participating in the inaugural class of ANCA Rising Leaders in 2019 changed her career trajectory. “Something clicked in me, and what I want out of these few days and future Advocacy Days is to make it click and light that fire in as many people as we can, because that’s the only way we can continue the cycle of activism,” she said.
During Advocacy Days, activists pushed for legislation that would end U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan. Following Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military assault on Artsakh and the subsequent forced displacement of its Armenian population, the organization is focused on preventing renewed attacks in the region, amid ongoing Azerbaijani aggression along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
Activists urged their representatives in the House to co-sponsor H.R. 7288, which would repeal the waiver authority of Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act. The bill is the counterpart to the “American Protection Act of 2023” (S. 3000) passed unanimously by the Senate last November. Since 2002, every U.S. president, including President Joe Biden, has waived Section 907, which restricts U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan.
In the Senate, S.Res.540 would require a report by the U.S. State Department on Azerbaijan’s human rights practices, pursuant to Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act. The law prohibits U.S. security assistance to any country that engages in a pattern of human rights violations.
The ANCA and genocide experts argue that last September’s military assault on Artsakh and mass forced exodus amount to a genocide. ANCA activists warned their representatives that, unless Azerbaijan is held to account, U.S. military aid can be used to perpetrate another genocide against Armenia proper.
“Everything we’re talking about right now fits into a timeline. The genocide didn’t end with 1915-1923, it didn’t end in 1923, and it hasn’t ended. It’s a continuous cycle of events. They’ve completed a second genocide, and now we’re afraid that there’s a third genocide coming,” Diratsouian told the Weekly.
According to Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a rare consensus has emerged within the scholarly community that Azerbaijan is committing a genocide against Armenia and Artsakh. ANCA activists were joined on the Hill by the Lemkin Institute, the Hellenic American Leadership Council, In Defense of Christians and the Middle East Forum, as well as Very Reverend Father Hayr Sahag, Vicar General of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America.
Joeden-Forgey argued that this consensus should have formed much earlier, considering that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has made genocidal statements against Artsakh for over a decade. She sees the 2020 Artsakh War as a lesson in the limitations of existing genocide prevention mechanisms.
“We’re not doing a good job as watchdogs. There should have been some office, some agency, somebody that wasn’t just an Armenian, something with reach beyond the global Armenian diaspora, monitoring his speech and recognizing that it is genocidal speech,” she told the Weekly.
Struck by the silence of the international community, including from Western governments, in response to Azerbaijan’s war on Artsakh in 2020, the Lemkin Institute decided to focus its work on global threats to Armenian life. “It was just Armenians alone in the world making a plea and by and large being left unheard,” Joeden-Forgey recalled. The institute has since released a series of Red Flag Alerts reporting threats of genocide against Armenia by neighbors Azerbaijan and Turkey.
In meetings with members of Congress, Joeden-Forgey advocated for the right to self-determination and repatriation of the Armenians of Artsakh. “I believe that the Artsakh genocide is a genocide that can be undone,” she said. “It’s a genocide where some of the worst consequences can be reversed, because the people are still alive, and that’s a hopeful thing.”
For Joeden-Forgey, repatriation is critical to preserving the particularities and wisdom of Artsakh Armenian identity. “In the United States, I think we don’t fully understand what it means to be a 4,000 year old civilization. This is an ancient community. It’s an indigenous community, and there’s so few intact indigenous communities left. We don’t understand what it means to be on land for that long and to develop an identity that relies on the land to thrive.”
In addition to restricting U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, the ANCA is advocating for legislation that would hold Azerbaijan accountable for its human rights violations against Armenians while securing justice for victims.
ANCA activists urged their representatives to enforce Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on Azerbaijani officials. The sanctions would target Azerbaijani government and military officials complicit in human rights violations committed during the 2020 and 2023 attacks on Artsakh. Activists also gathered support for H.Res.861, which calls on the U.S. to ensure the release of all POWs.
In order to file the Magnitsky Act sanctions, the Armenian Legal Center in cooperation with human rights lawyer Siranush Sahakyan prepared dossiers detailing human rights abuses committed against Armenian prisoners of war held in Azerbaijan, including unlawful detention, torture and summary execution. Sahakyan says that Armenian POWs experience systemic violence, considering that there are no cases in which an Armenian POW held in Azerbaijan was not subjected to the harshest forms of torture or ill-treatment.
AYF D.C. “Ani” Chapter member Sune Hamparian, who helped Sahakyan prepare the Magnitsky Act sanctions as an intern, calls the human rights lawyer her “idol.” In personal and moving testimony, the high school senior shared her shock in response to the horrifying evidence presented in the dossiers during meetings with members of congress.
“Those soldiers that were on the front lines and faced the enemy for our country’s protection, who lost their lives in cruel, heartless ways, if they went through all of that, then we don’t have the right to say, there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have the right to turn away,” Hamparian told the Weekly.
Lillian Avedian
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