“THERE CAN BE NO PEACE, SECURITY AND RECONCILIATION IN OUR REGION AS LONG AS…”: R.HOVHANNISYAN’S SPEECH IN BAKU
Raffi K. Hovannisian, chairman of the Heritage Party and Armenia’s
first minister of foreign affairs, has returned from Baku, Azerbaijan,
where he took part in the 7th General Assembly of the International
Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) between November 21
and 24. The meeting brought together 250 delegates representing
60 political parties from 25 Asian nations, together with a host
of Azerbaijani functionaries. Heritage Party Press Service informs
about this.
The full text of his speech, which keynoted the first plenary session
on November 23, follows.
Address of
Raffi K. Hovannisian
at the ICAPP 7th General Assembly
Baku, 23 November 2012
Mister chairman, distinguished colleagues:
I shall speak but once, so let it be crystal clear.
In a critical but good-faith search for peace, security, and
reconciliation in Asia, I came to this beautiful city of Baku,
where hundreds of thousands of Armenians once lived before they
were forcibly dispossessed and expelled in January 1990 and whose
erstwhile presence has been reduced to one remnant church which has
been shut down and transformed to foreign purpose. Virtually none
remains today, and although our Azerbaijani colleagues make reference
to the existence of several thousand ethnic Armenians, I have seen no
evidence of that claim. I have asked the authorities here to arrange
for me a meeting with even one Armenian who dares to identify himself
as such in current-day Baku.
I came here with a different, dialogue-driven spirit and intent, but
have immediately faced a stark but expected reality of partisanship,
selective propaganda, repetitive rhetoric, unparalleled l xenophobia,
and an untruthful presentation of parochial positions-not only in
society and political circles but also at the presidential level.
Everything that stands against the precepts and principles of ICAPP.
There can be no peace, security and reconciliation in our region as
long as:
1) Azerbaijan launches a failed war of aggression against Mountainous
Karabagh and its freedom-loving people, as well as against its own
minorities living in its midst, and then blames the self-defenders
for that failure;
2) Azerbaijan pursues an official policy of intentional destruction
of cultural heritage, and most particularly the daylit destruction in
December 2005 of thousands of hand-crafted khatchkars (cross-stones) at
the medieval Armenian cemetery at Jugha, Nakhichevan-not as collateral
damage of war, but 11 years after the ceasefire and hundreds of
miles away from the conflict zone-and ever since has blocked all
international missions to the site of this shameful desecration;
3) Azerbaijan continues to release and glorify convicted axe-murderers
for the sole reason that the victim is Armenian, without even one
voice of condemnation of this cowardly act of hatred in what the
founder of ICAPP has referred to as “this inclusive democracy”; and
4) Azerbaijan, in a redundant war of words and terminologies, throws
about at meetings such as this the loaded language of “occupation,”
when in reality it was liberation, decolonization and everybody’s right
to self-determination, and when “occupation” in fact applies most
appropriately to Azerbaijani and Turkish control-through genocide,
ethnic cleansing, and then the shame of official denialism-of large
swathes of the Armenian patrimony from Shahumian and Nakhichevan to
the western reaches of the Armenian Plateau.
Peace, security, and reconciliation are possible, however, when we
all live by the same standards:
1) achievement of good, self-critical governance, public
accountability, and the assumption of responsibility for safeguarding
the equal civil rights and human dignity of our own constituents,
opposition parties, non-governmental organizations, and minorities;
2) empowerment of the average citizen, civil society, and true
democracy, not rule by dynasty or dictatorship;
3) recognition of the liberty, sovereignty, and integrity of all
states, old and new, including the Republic of Mountainous Karabagh,
whose return to the status quo ante is impossible, but rather
whose recognition within its constitutional frontiers will enable a
simultaneous, multilateral, and reciprocal right of return for all
refugees of all nationalities-not only the displaced Azerbaijanis,
but also the more than half million Armenian deportees from Shahumian,
Nakhichevan, Artsvashen, and Azerbaijan proper, together with the
descendants of the victims and survivors of the great genocide and
national dispossession of the Armenian people;
4) protection of all cultural heritage and condemnation of all
desecration of that heritage, whether Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish,
Christian, or other;
5) prevention and punishment of all genocides and crimes against
humanity; and
6) the exercise of humanity and upholding of the common understanding
that pain and suffering are universal and, in this connection,
due remembrance of the thousands of righteous Turkish neighbors who
demonstrated these virtues in saving Armenian lives, including my
grandmother’s, during the Genocide of 1915, as well as the hundreds
of Azerbaijanis of good conscience who attempted to do the same during
the anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait and Baku decades later.
For this I am grateful. And hopeful for a better day for the sake of
our generations to come.
I thank you for your kind invitation, hospitality, and attention to
the whole truth, however terrible or uncomfortable it might be.
26.11.12, 15:35
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