Nations do not disappear only with defeat, they disappear the moment they agree to forget. Former Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazyan said this during the conference on the Armenian Genocide.

“History does not end at this moment, it continues, but already without us as the subject of that history. If we don’t speak today, we don’t call things by their names, if we refuse our own language and memory, we must clearly realize that this is not just a political choice, this is a refusal of our history, our presence and our future.

Nations do not disappear only by defeat, they disappear the moment they agree to forget why they exist. If we let the memory go blank, tomorrow we’ll just realize it’s gone. And at that moment, there will be nothing left to defend, no name, no history, no presence, only silence. Silence as the final confirmation that we ourselves have refused to be the subject of history. I am sure that we are not a people of silence,” he said.

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