Every year on April 24 Armenians the world over honor the memory of our 1.5 million martyrs of the Armenian Genocide.
But, we also know that the Genocide is not over. It continues silently, relentlessly, insidiously.
The scars are not healed. The wounds are still festering, and the suffering is real. Today, the trauma, the pain continues. We are still haunted by the emptiness that comes from losing entire families. When a loved one disappears, the disappearance lasts forever.
People who do not know Armenians very well think that 8,000 miles and 109 years away from the killing fields in Western Armenia, it might be easy for us to forget. It would indeed be easy for us to teach our children only the more pleasant lessons of Armenian history. Others might think it natural for us to spend this day at work, at school, enjoying life, like millions of other ordinary families. But Armenians are not ordinary people. History has imposed special tasks on us.
Alongside the painful lessons of a 3,000-year-old history, we have a national obligation to live every day of our lives in remembrance of those who perished. Our every action, our very way of life must adamantly and unflinchingly proclaim: Never again shall the Armenian people be subjected to genocide! Never again will we allow men, women, and children to be torn away from their home, their schools, and their churches, to be massacred in deserts, rivers, and empty fields! Never again will we permit Armenians to suffer under the oppressors, such as the Turks or Azeris.
And not only Armenians.
Yes, we may live in the computer age of global communication, but the barbarities in today’s headlines seem lifted from man’s darkest past. See how easily helpless minorities are rounded up and put to the death by the thousands in their homeland while the entire world watches, sheds few tears, sends a few dollars to a UN humanitarian agency, and then changes the channel. Sure, a picture may be worth a thousand words. But what a numbing effect a thousand pictures of suffering has on us.
The Genocide of the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 needs to be addressed and justice rendered to the victims, their survivors and the Armenian nation. Those are the simple demands of the Armenian people. What can we do today to bring that Judgment Day closer to reality? First, we must convince ourselves that we cannot rely on anyone else to help us in our fight for justice. No one can do for us what we must do for ourselves!
Without a just and final resolution to the 1915 Genocide, the Armenian people cannot rest. Unless Turkey accepts its guilty responsibility in the Genocide of Armenians, no real peace can exist between the Armenian people and the Turkish government. Until justice is done, the Armenian people cannot trust Turkey to be a peaceful neighbor. It will always be a threat to the Armenian Republic. It is up to the 5 million of us outside Armenia to gain recognition, reparations, and return of the lands where our grandfathers lived, worked and died.
Our battle is not easy. We can no longer remain quietly on the sidelines while cold-blooded bureaucrats sell off our past and our children’s future.
Speaking with a single voice, Armenians everywhere must reject any further attempt to water down our nation’s just demands on Turkey.
My second suggestion: solidarity with and compassion for the suffering of others is a true measure of greatness of any people. Armenians carry this lesson in their very bones.
On April 24, it is only proper and just for Armenians to reiterate their solidarity with all other victims of intolerance. We must reject all forms of racism and fight against intolerant political voices. When we side with the powerful and the arrogant, when we applaud or ignore their abuses, we betray our own history. This is our ultimate responsibility to the martyrs of the Armenian Genocide.
William Paparian is a former mayor of Pasadena.
