Category: 2022

Authorities ready to fully hand Artsakh over to enemy: Vanetsyan calls on everyone to come to Freedom Square

Vanyan Gary
NEWS.am
Armenia –
14:35, 17.04.2022

The Armenian authorities have decided to hand Nagorno Karabakh over to Azerbaijan and now it’s time to prevent this scenario, former head of the National Security Service of Armenia Artur Vanetsyan said.

His remarks came while addressing citizens on social media, starting a rally on Freedom Square in Yerevan to fight for Karabakh.

“The authorities of the country have already put up with the idea that Artsakh will be a part of Azerbaijan. We have come to a situation where the security of Armenia itself is threatened,” Vanetsyan said.

According to him, the most precious thing of the Armenian warriors’ lives is put under doubt and the result of the years-long fight is rendered senseless. Vanetsyan came to Freedom Square precisely to stop this process. He assured that he would not go anywhere, urging everyone to join him, and together they discussed further plans and steps.


Artsakh Ombudsman: Protection of rights is acceptable to all, but political interests decide everything

Emil Lazarian
NEWS.am
Armenia –
16:30, 17.04.2022

From the viewpoint of the protection of Artsakh people’s rights, there was no visible interest in the meeting with OSCE Chairman-in-Office Zbigniew Rau, Artsakh Ombudsman Gegham Stepanyan said on the air of the NEWS.am Power Factor.

“During the meeting, my main task was to present the humanitarian situation in Artsakh and the consequences of Azerbaijan’s criminal actions, and to make it clear that human rights cannot be ignored. In my opinion, from the meeting, it is very difficult to bring the defense of rights in the world. It seems acceptable to everyone that there are rights to be protected, but in the end it is political interests that decide everything. And I did not see any interest in terms of the real protection of Artsakh people’s rights,” Stepanyan said.

He noted that during the meeting it was said that the status of Artsakh must be solved by both sides in the course of negotiations.

Greek FM: Humanity’s duty is to recognize Armenian Genocide

Toneyan Mark
NEWS.am
Armenia –
Greek FM: Humanity’s duty is to recognize Armenian Genocide
18:34, 17.04.2022

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias stated the need for further international recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

“This year in Greece we remember the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Our thoughts are with the Armenians living in our homeland and around the world. Expanding the geography of international recognition of the Genocide is a duty of humanity,” Dendias wrote on social media.

He posted a photo of himself taken in October 2020 during a visit to Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan, where the minister laid a wreath at the memorial to the victims of the Genocide.

Catholicos Aram I: Artsakh’s independence can’t be subject of bargaining

Maral Takmazian
NEWS.am
Armenia –
Catholicos Aram I: Artsakh’s independence can’t be subject of bargaining
19:27, 17.04.2022

Artsakh’s independence can’t be a subject of bargaining, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia Aram I.

“As Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, we and our people cannot remain indifferent and silent, we will tell the people of Artsakh that we are with you. Peace, independence and justice are God-given values and rights. The people of Artsakh collectively established and consolidated their independence in the land where they have lived and worked for centuries. Today, Armenia faces serious concerns, and we expect that the people of Armenia, as well as the people of Artsakh, will be able to firmly assert their collective will, declaring that the nation’s will to live freely, the right to live in peace cannot be undermined in light of the so-called geopolitical situation,” he said.

Police detain 5 supporters of Ex-NSS Head at Freedom Square in Yerevan

Garnik Zakarian
NEWS.am
Armenia –
20:16, 17.04.2022

Police detain 5 supporters of the ex-National security service head in Yerevan’s Freedom Square.

The Armenian police have detained supporters of the former National Security Service head, opposition deputy from the “I have honor” bloc Artur Vanetsyan, who came to the protest action in the center of Yerevan’s Freedom Square.

Arsen Babayan, a member of the Homeland Party political council, said that the police brought 5 participants to the rally.

The protesters tried to set up tents, but the law enforcement officers did not allow them to do so. The protesters wanted to block the traffic on the adjacent street, but the police interfered. There was a scuffle between citizens and law enforcers, during which people were arrested.

The former head of the National Security Service of Armenia, head of the opposition parliamentary faction “I have Honor ” Artur Vanetsyan started a rally at Freedom Square in Yerevan to fight for Karabakh.

Armenian school vandalized in Istanbul

Eduard Nalbandian

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YEREVAN, APRIL 15, ARMENPRESS. The gate to an Armenian school in Istanbul, Turkey was vandalized with a swastika, Massis Post reported.

The act of vandalism occurred as Armenians prepare for Easter and look to remember the Armenian genocide anniversary, observed on April 24.

The same school in Istanbul faced anti-Armenian persecution in November 2016 when graffiti was written on the walls stating “One night, we suddenly will be in Karabagh”. Also in 2016, walls of Uskudar Surp Khach Seminary and Uskudar Kalfayan School were vandalized with anti-Armenian graffiti. The graffiti read “May the Turkish race live!” and “Torment Armenians”.

Armenia’s Culinary History Hides in a Museum’s Manuscripts

Torgomian Varazdat


BY RAFAEL TONONAPRIL 15, 2022


Homemade gata, a traditional Armenian pastry. THE PICTURE PANTRY / ALAMY

AT THE MATENADARAN, A MUSEUM in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan, is a manuscript written in Middle Armenian, an archaic version of the language used today. It’s a little mysterious, but researchers believe it presents the recipe for a cake or sweet bread: The list of ingredients seems to contain sugar, flour, and nuts. Another manuscript, probably even older, has a diagram of a cow and its cuts on one of the yellow stained pages.

The Matenadaran (known in English as the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts) contains over 23,000 of Armenia’s oldest, rarest, and most valuable documents. Just 10 of these manuscripts relate to food. Few researchers have shown interest in them, with one notable exception: Sonia Tashjian. Tashjian, a researcher and leading expert in Armenian cuisine, is one of the most devoted visitors to the Matenadaran. Its modest collection of food manuscripts is helping her discover how Armenians ate and lived in centuries past. Guided by documents like these, she aims to recover an essential part of the country’s threatened history.

An ancient cow in an ancient manuscript. DAVID EGUI

Born in Anjar, a small village of Armenians in Lebanon, Tashjian moved to Armenia when she was 20. There she began a quest to define Armenian food and identify its influence. Fueled by her discoveries, she hosted a TV show named Grandma’s Cuisine. “Nothing says as much about Armenian identity as its culinary heritage,” she says. According to her, food has become a vital integrity factor for millions of Armenians worldwide.00

Armenians have survived repeated annihilation attempts. Byzantines, Persians, and Seljuks all conquered them before Ottoman Turks colonized Armenia in the 16th century. Armenians suffered large-scale massacres in the 19th century. Then came the genocide of 1915-1917, which claimed more than a million lives. For Armenians, ancient manuscripts aren’t just important. These are the documents that attest to their existence and identity as a people.

Hundreds of thousands of genocide survivors found refuge in various parts of the world, resulting in a diaspora of more than 7 million Armenians in more than 100 countries—compared with the 3 million who live in Armenia. Many witnessed their history and customs being threatened to the point of potential extinction. Cooking their ancestors’ recipes around the world has been a way to keep the flame alive.

Herbs and flowers collected in Armenia. DAVID EGUI

“Because gastronomy, unlike other fields, is a knowledge transferring from one generation to another”—or “from mouth to ear,” as Tashjian prefers to say—“it remains steady.”

While cookbooks and recipes are scarce in Armenian museums, Tashjian has found new methods of unearthing culinary history through her work at Sardarapat Ethnographic Museum. “My main and irreplaceable source is the notebooks from the genocide survivors,” she says. “Many wrote memoirs after the 1915 genocide, reminiscing [about] life in their lost birthplaces. There are a lot of wonderful ethnographic themes in those books, mainly recipes and cooking techniques.”

In addition to the exodus caused by the genocide, many Armenians left during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when their country, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, gained independence. Each diasporic community is part of what Armenian people worldwide call “the Armenian nation,” a collective that transcends geographical borders. “That’s why it is challenging to address the question of our gastronomy,” says Arpine Asryan, a staff researcher at the Matenadaran. It also explains why it is hard to find official publications that focus on Armenian cuisine—especially those published in the Armenian alphabet (developed around 405 by Mesrop Mashtots).

A manuscript with a recipe, probably for cake. DAVID EGUI

The first culinary study of Armenian manuscripts, “Dishes and Feasts in Ancient Armenia,” was published at the beginning of the 20th century by Mekhitarists church father Vardan Hatsun. In 2021, Hayk Hambardzumyan, a specialist in Armenian literature and head of the Publishing Department at the Matenadaran, wrote about the dishes featured in the Armenian epic David of Sassoun. He highlighted dishes such as pilaf rice and jazhik, a cottage-like cheese, considered to be the food of the poor in the epic.

In 2014, UNESCO added Armenian lavash to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The flatbread, eaten in the South Caucasus and Western Asia, is part of a flatbread-making culture in Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey. In situations like these, the manuscripts and ancient recipe books collected by Matenadaran become crucial. “It’s a good reason to look through the sources and find out who had or prepared that very dish first,” says Asryan. “When one country applies for a particular dish, others try to prove that that dish doesn’t belong to only that country. And at that very moment, they all refer to the old cookbooks, manuscripts, and recipes to prove their point.”

The Matenadaran façade. DAVID EGUI

According to Asryan, many Syriac Armenians moved to Armenia in the wake of the humanitarian crisis resulting from Syria’s civil war. Armenians have also come back from Iran and Lebanon in recent years. “Nowadays, our cuisine has many variations thanks to [the return of] Iranian Armenians, for instance, brought oriental elements, mainly the culture of spices. Armenians create national dishes in every country by adapting to its food capacity and availability,” she says. Many who returned to Armenia also brought back family manuscripts and recipe books that have been kept for years, which also help tell the story of Armenian cuisine and how it influenced many cuisines around the world. Tashjian’s job is to bring together these pieces that, though scattered around the world and often attributed to other cultures, bear Armenian fingerprints.

“I gather the recipes of our historical fatherland, from western to eastern Armenia regions, passing through Nagorno-Karabakh, old Cilicia, Polis and around. But also from Iran and Georgia Armenian regions, where the Armenians have lived for centuries,” Tashjian says. She then tries to replicate the dishes as accurately as she can and publishes them on sites such as Houshamadyan, a digital project that revives Ottomanian-Armenian culture.

By interviewing genocide survivors, Tashjian can track down family documents that preserve Armenia’s cultural and culinary legacy. For a nation forced to split across the world, her job, she explains, is to get all the Armenian dishes back on the table.


https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/armenian-food-history-manuscripts

Berj Najarian runs 2022 Boston Marathon, but that’s nothing compared to his Armenian ancestors

Hambik Zargarian
The New England Patriots
Apr 15, 2022 at 10:07 PM
Alexandra Francisco

Patriots.com writer

There are aspects of his Armenian heritage that Berj Najarian would have never learned in school or through his own research.

As many different cultures have evolved with time, one as ancient and rich as his was attacked throughout its history and almost eradicated completely in the first genocide of the 20th century.

Through first-hand stories from his maternal grandfather, Najarian learned about the tragic plight and resilience of those who kept his culture from extinction. With that, comes a shared pride felt by him and other Armenians across the world — one that could only be cultivated from a responsibility to keep their culture alive.

In his own attempt to do just that, the Patriots’ longtime director of football/head coach administration will run the 2022 Boston Marathon on Monday to raise money for Who We Are, the non-profit he founded in 2021.

“There absolutely is a survival mentality and that exists within the Armenian people,” Najarian said. “I mean, I’m here in this country because my grandparents and great grandparents survived hell. What they had to go through just to live is hard to imagine, which is why we owe it to the people who came before us to carry on the things, the traditions, the culture, and the identity that they’ve provided us.”

Who We Are is committed to preserving those cultural identities and passing them on – celebrating every diverse background and ethnicity.

Najarian grew up in an Armenian-American household surrounded by the language, traditions, music, cuisine, and religion of his ancestors. He has an ethnic name, as do his brothers, and as a teen, he even attended (and now sends his children to) the same Armenian summer camp where his parents met in Franklin, Mass.

His mother grew up in Watertown, Mass., where many Armenians initially landed after fleeing to the United States to escape Ottoman oppression in the early 1900s. His grandfather, Papken Kechichian, was among several members of his family who survived the Armenian Genocide, where more than 1.5 million were killed. Kechichian made the harrowing journey through the Syrian desert to an orphanage in Aleppo. The family eventually went on to Paris before settling in the Greater Boston Area.

Conflict never completely subsided in the Caucasus, though.

To this day, Armenian cuisine shows the influence of the regions that surround it, a reminder of the wars and invasions that made their people so resilient. Yet, many don’t learn about the systematic deportation and destruction of Armenians relative to genocides that followed. Ancient churches and one of civilization’s oldest alphabets still exist in Armenia, the first state to declare Christianity its official religion, but they remain threatened.

“The Armenian Genocide was the first of the 20th century,” Najarian said. “It was a crime on a massive, unmeasurable scale, and unlike many other genocides, there were no repercussions. No accountability, no punishment, no sanctions — nothing.

“People have survived, physically, and they’ve managed to keep their cultures alive as well. That’s where Who We Are is coming in — to try and aid in that however we can.”

The idea for the non-profit stemmed from 2020, as conversations about social justice took front and center across the country and NFL locker rooms alike.

Simultaneously, ongoing conflict at the Armenian border escalated that fall, with attacks from neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It lit a fire under Najarian that incentivized him to get on social media and raise awareness about the war. He didn’t quite know the power of his platform at the time, having spent most of his career behind the scenes. But support was overwhelming, and his Armenian-inspired cleats were auctioned off for $40,300 as part of the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats campaign.

“To see the bidding go crazy like it did was surprising in a sense, but also, knowing on the other hand how Armenians feel about being Armenian, it didn’t shock me but it did blow me away at the same time.”

That money supported the Armenia Fund, but Najarian wanted to come up with a way to make a continued change, controlling what he can control in a complicated geopolitical issue while not limiting the impact to only Armenian causes.

“I really kind of looked at well, why is this so important to me?” Najarian reflected. “What is it about my heritage, why is this so important? It comes back to culture. As an Armenian, I think I speak for most Armenians out there — especially the ones I know in this country — is that you have this sense of heritage and culture ingrained in you from the beginning and all the way through, whether it’s art, music, dance, food, religion, knowing history, just having this feeling of identity and purpose.

“That exists for me as an Armenian and I know that it exists for lots of other people from other backgrounds. So that was really the motivation to start this foundation called Who We Are — to support and promote all these great things that we all have, and make sure they’re preserved and strengthened and live on in our communities.”

For Najarian, keeping his culture alive is a responsibility. Initially, it was Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders who were rounded up, deported, or killed. What other ideas and technologies were lost along with them?

“I think about what would have become of those people if that hadn’t had happened,” Najarian said. “If approximately 1.5 million out of about 2.2 million weren’t wiped out? What would have become of this population 100 years later? That’s a hard thing for me to wrap my head around. Not just the lives lost, but the future lost.”

The sneakers Najarian auctioned off are now displayed at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown – a city symbolic of safety and prosperity for Armenians. Because of Watertown’s connection to his family and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, he felt compelled to run the marathon for the first time the following year.

The second time around in 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine prevalent in news coverage, Najarian runs it again to benefit his own mission.

“For my whole Patriots career, I’ve been behind the scenes — that’s just my role and that’s great,” Najarian said. “But that war, and me really having a fire lit, coincided with our team and players and organization really getting involved with a lot of social justice causes and speaking up, raising awareness, and shining lights on things, and really getting personal. Thankfully I had the opportunity, given by our players, to express myself about something that was important to me. I’m forever grateful to be able to do that.”

After the marathon, Najarian is motivated to brush up on his Armenian, and with the initiative of Who We Are, perhaps help kids learn the language of their ancestors, too.

Armenian-Australians urge PM Morrison & Opposition Leader Albanese to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide

Torgomian Varazdat

CANBERRA: The peak public affairs organisation of the Armenian-Australian community has appealed to both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, urging both to correctly characterise the 1915 Ottoman massacres of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks as “Genocide” in their annual commemoration statements due by 24th April 2022.

As Armenians will gather worldwide to commemorate the 107th Anniversary of the first genocide of the 20th century, descendants of survivors in Australia expect full and proper acknowledgement of the crimes against their ancestors, which saw 1.5 million indigenous Armenians, as well as over 1 million Assyrians and Greeks, systematically massacred at the hands of Ottoman Turkey between 1915 – 1923––a crime still denied by today’s autocratic leadership of the Republic of Turkey.

The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU) has written to both leaders of the major political parties on behalf of the 50,000 strong Armenian-Australian community, calling on them to acknowledge the will of the Australian people, which was most recently amplified in a November 2021 unanimous House of Representatives debate calling on the Australian Government to recognise the Armenian Genocide without any euphemisms or qualifiers.

ANC-AU Executive Director Haig Kayserian addressed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s statement in 2021, which fell short of using the word Genocide, but referred to the “deportations, dispossession and deaths” suffered by the Armenian people in 1915.

“Whilst we acknowledge that the Prime Minister’s statement in the lead up to the 106th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide went further than past statements causing great offence to our community, it is time he takes the next step and answer his own calls as a backbench MP in 2011, when Mr. Morrison called on Australia to recognise the Armenian Genocide,” Kayserian said.

“Following recognition of the 1915 Genocide by US President Joe Biden in 2021 and over 30 nations worldwide, as well as clear consensus in the Australian Parliament, Canberra has run out of excuses to remain silent and appease a foreign dictator openly trying to distort the pages of history,” he added.

ANC-AU Political Affairs Director Michael Kolokossian addressed the community’s sincere disappointment and frustration following the failure to receive a statement from Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese in 2021.

“Past Opposition Leaders, including Kim Beazley and Tony Abbott, have not shied away from proper characterisation of the Armenian Genocide, and what we expect from Mr. Albanese as the alternative Prime Minister of this country, especially ahead of an election, is a public declaration that represents the view of so many of his colleagues and the electorate, that the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks suffered genocide in 1915,” Kolokossian said.

“Mr. Albanese was present at the launch of the Joint Justice Initiative at Parliament House in February 2020, when the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities declared proper recognition of the 1915 genocides suffered by our ancestors was our collective legislative priority, and it is now time he acts on those wishes by the voting citizens of this country.”

On Sunday 24th April 2022, members of Australia’s Armenian, Assyrian and Greek communities will take to the streets of Sydney and Melbourne at the annual #MARCHFORJUSTICE, to repeat the call on the Goverment and Opposition to accurately recognise the 1915 massacres as Genocide.

“The #MARCHFORJUSTICE will reveal the positions of both major parties on this issue prior to the May 21 Federal Election, and we are hopeful it will be a reason to celebrate a major advancement in our pursuit of justice,” Kolokossian added.

—

The full letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison can be read below:

Dear Prime Minister,

As you are aware, every year on 24th April, Armenian-Australians join our brothers and sisters from around the world in commemorating the 1.5 million innocent Armenians, and over 1 million Assyrians and Greeks who were targeted, deported and systematically massacred at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, between 1915- 1923, solely due to their ethnic background and Christian faith spanning approximately two thousand years.

As descendants of survivors of these heinous crimes against humanity that began with the capture and execution of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople on the fateful date before ANZAC Day, we expect your Government recognises the Armenian Genocide (as well as the genocides of the Greeks and Assyrians) without euphemisms in place of the word genocide.

Over the year, as the peak public affairs body of the Armenian-Australian community, we have cordially requested our Prime Minister take this step through his or her statement honouring our day of commemoration. While we acknowledge you took steps in 2021 to describe the events of 1915 with greater sympathy and accuracy, you sadly stopped short of characterising the events as genocide, which only serves to appease the foreign dictatorship overseeing a campaign of genocide denial – which is recognised as the last stage of genocide.

Academia has spoken on this issue. The Armenian Genocide was listed by Professor Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term “genocide” and authored the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as a motivating factor for his legacy, The International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies have since called on all nations to accurately recognise the Armenian Genocide.

Our nation’s elected representatives have also spoken on this issue. The House of Representatives, where you stood in 2011 calling for Australia to join the righteous in recognising the Armenian Genocide accurately, has since unanimously debated in favour of two separate motions unequivocally recognising the Armenian Genocide, most recently under your leadership in November 2021. Further, over 40 current Federal parliamentarians have signed affirmations of support for the Joint Justice Initiative, established by the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities, in support of national recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

It is time for Australia to take a principled stance on this issue and join the New South Wales Parliament, South Australian Parliament and over 30 of our international allies, including France, Canada, the United States and Germany, in characterising the 1915 systematic extermination of the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other Christian minorities of Ottoman Turkey as Genocide.

Consistent with US President Joe Biden’s acknowledgement of this crime against humanity as Genocide in 2021, our community is hopeful, that your statement on 24th April 2022 will follow in the footsteps of our closest ally and help deliver us closure in our pursuit for justice on behalf of our fallen ancestors.

Another reason for hope is our nation’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Senator the Hon. Marise Payne declaring that Australia’s position on the issue was now “under review” and that your Government was “obviously viewing the actions of other countries on this matter and drawing those into our consideration as well”.

Domestic progress in Australia’s Federal Parliament demonstrates the political will of elected parliamentarians and the overall consensus that the Armenian Genocide must be recognised. We trust that you will honour this sentiment to honour your own calls from 2011.

On behalf of the 50,000 Armenian-Australians, we urge you to officially characterise the events of 1915 by their true name – Genocide.

Thank you in advance for your consideration, and we look forward to receiving your statement on the occasion of the 107th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Yours sincerely,

[Signed]

Haig Kayserian

—

The full letter to the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese can be read below:

Dear Mr. Albanese,

As you are aware, every year on 24th April, Armenian-Australians join our brothers and sisters from around the world in commemorating the 1.5 million innocent Armenians, and over 1 million Assyrians and Greeks who were targeted, deported and systematically massacred at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, between 1915 – 1923, solely due to their ethnic background and Christian faith spanning approximately two thousand years.

As descendants of survivors of these heinous crimes against humanity that began with the capture and execution of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople on the fateful date before ANZAC Day, we expect Australia’s political leaders to recognise the Armenian Genocide (as well as the genocides of the Assyrians and Greeks) without euphemisms in place of the word genocide.

Over the years, as the peak public affairs body of the Armenian-Australian community, we have cordially requested both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader take this step through his or her statement honouring our day of commemoration.

While we acknowledge that the Prime Minister did take steps in 2021 to describe the events of 1915 with greater sympathy and accuracy, he stopped short of characterising the events as genocide, which only serves to appease the foreign dictatorship overseeing a campaign of genocide denial – which is recognised as the last stage of genocide.

Yet, our community, along with the Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities were left sincerely disappointed by your missing statement last year on this issue, particularly given the precedent set by past Opposition leaders such as Hon. Kim Beazley and Hon. Tony Abbott, when they correctly characterised the massacres perpetrated against the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks by the Ottoman Empire for what they were – Genocides.

Academia has spoken on this issue. The Armenian Genocide was listed by Professor Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term “genocide” and authored the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as a motivating factor for his legacy. The International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies have since called on all nations to accurately recognise the Armenian Genocide.

Our nation’s elected representatives have also spoken on this issue. The House of Representatives has unanimously debated in favour of two separate motions unequivocally recognising the Armenian Genocide. In a further showing of non-partisan support, over 40 current Federal parliamentarians signed affirmations of support for the Joint Justice Initiative, established by the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities in support of national recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

While we are appreciative of your support at the February 2020 launch of the Joint Justice Initiative, which declared the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities’ priority to ensure Australia joins the long list of nations that have recognised the genocides committed against our ancestors, we ask that your words this April 24th match your private sentiments.

It is time for Australian leaders to take a principled stance on this issue and join the New South Wales Parliament, South Australian Parliament and over 30 of our international allies, including France, Canada, the United States and Germany, in characterising the 1915 systematic extermination of the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other Christian minorities of Ottoman Turkey as the Armenian Genocide.

Consistent with U.S. President Joe Biden’s acknowledgement of this crime against humanity as Genocide in 2021, our community is hopeful that your statement on 24th April 2022 will follow in the footsteps of our closest ally and help deliver us closure in our pursuit for justice on behalf of our fallen ancestors.

Under your leadership, the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Geek-Australia communities are hopeful that the Opposition will reflect the values and growing will of the Australian people.

We believe now you have a unique opportunity to address the repeated failures of past Australian leaders and do what is right and just, prior to the 107th Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and the upcoming Australian Federal Election.

A statement rightfully acknowledging the 1915 Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides and your commitment to recognising these massacres as Genocide, as Prime Minister, will be favourably welcomed by the Armenian-Australian, Assyrian-Australian and Greek-Australian communities, thus bringing closure to the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of descendants of genocide survivors who now call Australia home.

We thank you in advance for your consideration on this important issue and look forward to receiving your statement commemorating the 107th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Yours sincerely,

[Signed]

Haig Kayserian