THE ONLY WAY TO CREATE A PROSPEROUS AND SECURE FUTURE FOR THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
BY ARA PAPIAN
Asbarez
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
The time has come that Armenia, anointed with the blood of her scions,
demand reparations for the suffering and misfortune she has borne
throughout the course of her history, become the master of her own
destiny.
– Nikoghayos Adonts, 1919. Armenian historian (1871-1942)
Almost a century after these words were published in an epigraph, the
ship of the fate of the Armenian people has not yet cast its anchors
in the port of reparations. At the cost of the collective efforts
of us all, centuries’ worth of sacrifice and decades of staunch
struggles, the ship of our fate approached the edge of reparations
for a short time ninety years ago; it appeared, just for a moment,
that the haven of reparations was within reach. But the political
winds suddenly switched direction at the last second and hurled us
towards the conspiratorial Kemalist-Bolshevik whirlpool.
And, to this day, the ship of our fate is being knocked about in
the tempestuous political sea. It is a sea with innumerable visible
and hidden reefs, a sea teeming with pirates, a sea where our ship is
wandering aimlessly, because the captain, instead of navigating towards
a blessed asylum, is trying to come to terms with those very pirates
by legitimizing their loot: an absolutely wrong and short-sighted act.
There are decisive eras in the lives of peoples, when the entire
future of that people is set on its course. We Armenians are currently
at such a stage. The unfortunate pair of Armenia-Turkey protocols
have upset the social and political life of all Armenians, they have
sharpened the memory of national dispossession, and consolidated the
desire to form a pan-national opposition against them. We are at a
decisive state today, as the protocols are simply unacceptable. They
are unacceptable from the point of view of the supreme and lasting
interests of our people. The past of a people, the security of a
nation, and the future of a state must not be sacrificed for the sake
of temporary or factional interests.
Ninety years ago, around this very time – on the 22nd of November,1920
– the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, declared
his arbitral award. The Wilsonian Arbitral Award, as I have had the
opportunity to discuss, is the gospel of our rights, the basis of our
demands, and the only way to create a prosperous and secure future
for the Republic of Armenia.
Let me very briefly turn to that extremely important document and
point out just a few main clauses. Since the arbitral award was
declared on the basis of the compromise of the Allied Powers at San
Remo on the 26th of April, 1920, as well as in the Treaty of Sèvres
(of the 10th of August, 1920), being enforced upon signing, that is,
since the 22nd of November, 1920, therefore this award is a binding,
inviolable and perpetual decision for all the Allied Powers of the
First World War (which comprise more than a hundred countries today)
and for all the states party to the Treaty of Sèvres (currently over
twenty countries). It is also binding, inviolable and perpetual for the
United States of America, as the arbitral award bears the Great Seal
of the United States, signed by the US President and co-signed by the
Secretary of State. In accordance with the prior written directive,
the Wilsonian Arbitral Award is binding for the defeated countries
of the First World War as well.
As per the basic principles of international law, which are codified
in the documents of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the
realization of the arbitral award is the non-negotiable obligation and
imperative duty of the parties to that document, that is, of all the
countries signatory to the compromise. And so, our pan-national quest
must be to demand of those countries on each 22nd of November to bear
the responsibility of their obligation which stems from international
law, and to do so not as some favor, but as a forgotten, partly denied,
but nevertheless irrefutable and inviolable international obligation.
It has been a few decades now that the 24th of April is marked as an
important date on the Armenian calendar, a day which showcases perhaps
the greatest manifestation of united Armenian political will. That day
was initially a day of requiems, of a holy remembrance for the Armenian
people, but then gradually grew to become a day of commemoration and of
demanding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Regardless, that is
a day of loss, or, at the most, a day of recognizing the dispossession.
As a nation, however, and as a community in pursuit of justice, we
are in need of a day of victory and reparation, of the realization of
justice and the establishment of our rights. We do have such a day:
the 22nd of November maintains that inexhaustible fire of triumph,
the day the arbitral award by the US President Woodrow Wilson deciding
the border between Armenia and Turkey was declared. By the arbitral
award, the Republic of Armenia got to include a part of our patrimony,
the north-eastern part. That day, a ruling was made on the basis
of international law and enforced once and for all, mandatory to
be carried out, legally inviolable and perpetual in terms of the
existence of our rights.
The 22nd of November must become a day of restoration of violated
justice, of national demands, and of the re-establishment of the
rights that have been taken away from us; in a word, a Day of National
Stewardship – Hayrenatiroutiun.
I call upon us all to appropriately mark such a day on the 22nd of
November each year – with rallies, marches, pickets, conferences,
publications, speeches – as it is only through National Stewardship,
through Hayrenatiroutiun, that we shall be able to build tomorrow’s
Armenia.
Ara Papian is the head of the Modus Vivendi Center.
From: A. Papazian