On March 26, in a regular briefing with journalists, Nikol Pashinyan referred to the genocidal acts committed by Azerbaijan in Artsakh in 2023 and said:

“We can say ethnic cleansing, but I consider this word harmful, because we can say ethnic cleansing and get a mirror of ethnic cleansing, then genocide, mirror genocide, everything mirrored, it means to enter the path of conflict. That’s not my concern. And I, as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, say that I completely refuse, so to speak, the agenda of restoration of historical justice, we must go after the just reality.” had noted Nikol Pashinyan.

How do Genocide scientists imagine their activities under these conditions, does this mean that they will be subject to censorship from now on in order to reveal the historical truth?

Genocide scholar Suren Manukyan, Head of the Department of Comparative Genocide Studies of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in other words, if the government has made a decision about what they should talk about and what not, that is their problem, it cannot affect his work activity in any way.

“My profession is to talk about those topics, if they tell me that you shouldn’t talk about those topics, it means that I should leave the field of science, engage in business or something else. To practice my profession and not talk about historical justice and not characterize what happened in Artsakh, which is genocide, would be simply ridiculous. If I don’t talk about all this myself, then as a specialist, I will stop respecting myself.” of 168.am Suren Manukyan said in a conversation with

According to our interlocutor, what he says is not only his personal opinion, but the opinion of universal genocide scholars. This is the opinion accepted and confirmed by genocide scholars and scientists in different countries of the world. In this case, he does not imagine how he can not talk about all that and remain silent.

“It is my duty, I do it. I don’t think that the head of the state or any other person should decide how a scientist should do science, because science is an area of ​​freedom. In other words, it gives you the freedom to deal with the topics you deal with, and that freedom should be limited only by not contradicting the objective truth. If it has to be in the form of a state order, then we are really going back to the era of censorship with you. But it was a different country, with its rules of the game, after all, it was not the Republic of Armenia, it was not the national state of Armenia.

And if at the political level they think it’s problematic, then they don’t even use it recently,” added Suren Manukyan.

Continuing, Suren Manukyan said that recently the government does not use the word Artsakh, they do not take steps towards the restoration of justice, that is, they have been implementing this policy for several years, they just started talking about it now.

Suren Manukyan answered the question: if the Armenian Genocide of 1915 was condemned and accepted by the world, would it be followed by other genocidal acts, including the one that took place in Artsakh in September 2023?

Genocide experts believe that not talking about the genocide, suppressing the memory of the genocide, or banning the victim from discussing the topic lead to new genocides.

I have said and I repeat now that the issue of recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is also a very important component of our foreign political security. For many years, we used it, increasing our national security level to a certain extent.

The louder we talked about it, demanded that Turkey recognize the Armenian Genocide, restore historical justice, the more problematic it was for Turkey to issue threats or carry out actions against Armenia. When you are silent, you open the door for them, when you don’t talk about Artsakh, you open the door of “Western Azerbaijan”, in my opinion, at least that’s how it is. Suren Manukyan mentioned.

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