Dear Editor,
After reading headlines about another year without “official U.S. recognition” of the Armenian Genocide, it is time Armenians realize that we will never get recognition and just reparations by appealing to the morality of bourgeois states. Their own histories are plagued with genocide and colonization.
And if they refuse to acknowledge their own pasts, they will never acknowledge our own.
Talk to any poor or oppressed person, tell them our history of immeasurable pain, and they will not be surprised as they face the same pain themselves.
The Arabs know what we went through. The Kurds know what we went through.
Tell it to any Indigenous person in the United States or Canada or Mexico and they will tell you our histories are the same.
Tell it to the Irish, whose ancestors suffered famine and exodus while the British government forced them to export food to sustain their empire.
Tell it to any person in East Asia, who still remembers the pain that colonialism has caused to their countries.
Tell it to any Indigenous Mexican, whose home was destroyed to make way for sugarcane farms and was forced to work there under appalling conditions. See if they will not easily call what we went through “genocide.”
Tell it to any Palestinian who is living through genocide today.
You will find countless friends among people whose histories match our own. With them, we can force every state in the world to acknowledge what happened to our people.
Sadly, all we care about is suits and ties and wining and dining politicians in lavish banquets. We left the streets for desk jobs and called it “hard work” instead of what it really is: Compromise.
The moment the oppressed and working masses across the globe realize the injustices they have all experienced—and more importantly, realize their collective strength—see if we don’t get genocide recognition and reparations the following day.
Garen Chiloyan,
Watertown, Mass.
Garen Chiloyan
Latest posts by Garen Chiloyan (see all)
- Letter to the Editor: Let’s Stop Appealing to the Morality of Bourgeois States - April 24, 2018
- The International Community Cannot Turn Its Back on the People of Afrin - February 2, 2018
- Op-Ed: Let Us Be That Generation - February 9, 2017
Excellent point, very well said. Collaboration is the key we need to unite with other nations that we have common interest.
Hear hear! We need to stop the politicking and bending over backwards for oligarchs, and dedicate ourselves to the hard work of solidarity and collective liberation.
I agree with Garen. I am reminded of two Armenian words: One is “perishan” meaning sorrowful. We can go on another hundred years & it isn’t likely that we will get more country’s to join in sympathy with the sorrowful Armenian. But if we chose a beautiful Armenian word like “huromencek” the meaning takes in you are welcome, please come-mana my house, then you automatically have made a friend. Also the prayer of Saint Francis come to mind; Lord make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console: for it is in giving that we receive. We can as Armenians be more creative, giving of ourselves in the medical field, Sports, music, etc. thereby showing by example that we are a people worthy of knowing.
“Tell it to any Palestinian who is living through genocide today.”
That is a big lie. Living in Syria as a child may have accustomed you to Arab nationalist lies.
The Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel. Our people were oppressed in Israel and other Arab-ruled lands for some 1400 years in the status of dhimmis. If you knew any history, you would know that Armenians too were dhimmis. There never was a people called “Palestinians” until after 1948 when Western antisemites invented this people unheard of before in order to bedevil the Jews and use the Arabs to resume the Nazi genocide of Jews. The Arab nationalist movement in fact collaborated with the German Nazis in the person of such as Nasser, Sadat, and Haj Amin el-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and top leader of the Palestinian Arabs.
If Israel practiced genocide against this sub-set of Arabs, why are there more of them now than in 1948 or 1967? I don’t think that you should believe what you were taught in Syria.
Right… Ethnic cleansing of fellow Semitic population of Palestinian Arabs does not count as genocide. Strangely, it is not antisemitic either. Interesting.
Such a childish article – full of historical falsehoods and a display of hate bordering on a full-blown tantrum. One of the things the nations the author claims contempt for (while conveniently also liking to live in) value the most is an accurate understanding of the past. Contrast that with the parts of the world the author seems to like, countries where history and truth exist to be subservient to and be altered and manipulated to fit the whims of religion or state policy.