GROUP CALLS ON ARMENIANS TO MARK NOVEMBER 22 AS “DAY TO RECLAIM THE HOMELAND”
HETQ
November 22, 2011
For the past few decades now, April 24 has served as one of the major
dates on the calendar for the Armenian people, a day representing
perhaps the most significant manifestation of united Armenian
political will.
In the Armenian world, that date began first as one of requiems
and remembrance, gradually developing into a day of righteous
indignation and demands for justice through the recognition of the
Armenian Genocide. Nevertheless, the 24 of April is a day of loss,
a day dedicated to acknowledging that greatest of losses.
However, as a nation and as a community in the pursuit of justice, we
need a day of victory and reparation, a day of the establishment of
justice and our rights. We have such a day; the day which keeps the
flames of victory burning is the 22nd of November – the date of the
Arbitral Award of US President Woodrow Wilson deciding the frontier
between Armenia and Turkey.
On that day, the arbitral award granted to the Republic of Armenia
a part of our historical heartland, in the north-east. That day put
in place and enforced forever a ruling which is binding, legally
inviolable and perpetual for the existence of our rights, all in
accordance with international law.
As the Arbitral Award was realised on the basis of the unqualified
compromis of Turkey and Armenia, as well as of the British Empire,
France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Canada, India,
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,
Romania, having been enforced upon signing, it is therefore binding,
inviolable and perpetual for all of the above countries and their
successor states. It is also binding, inviolable and perpetual for
the US, as the arbitral award bears the Great Seal of the United
States of America, signed by the US President [Woodrow Wilson],
and co-signed by the Secretary of State.
According to the basic principles of international law, codified by
numerous international documents, the arbitral award is to be carried
out by all parties to that document, that is, by the countries which
formed part of the compromis. It is their duty without reservation,
their absolute responsibility. Thus, it ought to be a pan-national
issue for us, to demand from those countries on the 22nd of November
each year, to carry out their responsibility as per international law,
and not to do so simply as a gesture of goodwill, but as an immediate
and inviolable international obligation which has lain forgotten,
and which has partly been denied.
November 22 must be rendered a day of restoration of justice, of
demands for national reparations and the re-establishment of our
dispossessed rights.
In the words of that great Armenian, Garegin Nzhdeh,
Hayrenadiroutian Day – The Day to Reclaim the Homeland
The Hayrenadiroutiun Public Movement calls upon all Armenians to
join us in our initiative, celebrating appropriately each year,
with pickets, rallies, and marches, Hayrenadiroutian Day.
The Hayrenadiroutiun Public Movement
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