The following remarks were delivered at the AYF-led protest in front of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington D.C., held on February 22, 2025, commemorating Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian massacres in Sumgait-Baku-Maragha-Kirovabad (1988-1992), along with demanding justice for the 2023 Artsakh genocide and release of Armenian prisoners of war.
Mgrdich Khrimian, Patriarch of Constantinople from 1869 to 1873, was known as Khrimian “Hayrig”, meaning “father”. As father to all Armenians, he led the Armenian Delegation to the Congress of Berlin after the Russo-Turkish War, where he attempted to seek greater autonomy for the Armenians living under Ottoman rule. Khrimian Hayrig was unsuccessful in doing so, explaining that the Armenians were met only with empty promises and diplomatic platitudes.
After the Congress of Berlin, the debate on the fate of the Armenians in the region would be termed, “The Armenian Question”. In 1894, the question was answered—with the wholesale massacre of Armenians at the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II—killing 300,000, because they dared to have a voice.
There can be no question. As long as Armenians exist, they will always face the threat of total annihilation. Reared now is the axe of Azerbaijan, executioner of the Pan-Turkic state, ready to continue the legacy of aggression. The Azerbaijani response to the Armenian Question, to the desire of Armenians to breathe free, was to make sure they don’t breathe at all.
In 1988, tired of repression under the Azerbaijani SSR, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to request that the region be transferred to the Armenian SSR. They received an immediate response—hundreds of thousands of Armenians living in Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad, targeted by state-organized mob violence, were killed, beaten and forced to flee Azerbaijan—made into another example of what happens should the Armenians dare speak.
There has been no cessation of this practice, and with every effort of Armenians to secure their natural rights and self-determination, the tactics of Azerbaijan have only grown more depraved. For 10 months, 120,000 Artsakhtsis were starved and bombed out of their homes, not in another lifetime, but in 2023. The next target—Tavush and Syunik—sovereign territories within the Republic of Armenia, lie occupied today by Azerbaijani troops, used as the strategic staging ground for the next campaign of annihilation.
I am here speaking for the Washington D.C. Chapter of the Armenian Youth Federation, to share on their behalf, in our nation’s capital, the questions that are formative to their identities as young Armenian Americans, questions whose answers will inform their votes—the ultimate exercise of democratic speech. As youth, we have grown up asking, why not our people? Why is their right to exist not innate? When did we decide that injustice anywhere was no longer injustice everywhere? In the face of resounding global silence, how can we not then ask, “Why is my life not worth as much as another’s?”
As youth, we will continue to ask these questions, though we know some of the answers: people died because of the names they had, the songs they sang and the God they worshiped. And we will continue to tell their stories, sing their songs and have faith in each other. To be here today as we have in years past, and in years to come. To remember what happened and to renew in our hearts our efforts to stop it from ever happening again because we will not let our dreams be deferred, nor our voices silenced.
Nareg Sakayan
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- Our unyielding voices - February 24, 2025
Can we say that all agreements forced on Armenians regarding Artsakh
are under DURESS ?
I would say DURESS is the proper terminology.
Another word could be BLACKMAIL.