This Monday, Yerevan was silent.
In both
Armenia
and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, every April 24 is a holiday.
It is the date on which the million and a half victims of a genocide that have already passed 108 years are remembered.
In this collective memory exercise, thousands of Armenians gathered at the foot of the Tsitsernakaberd Monument, in their capital, to commemorate their dead and to continue demanding that the whole world recognize what happened to their people as genocide.
Tens of thousands walked in a procession to a hill west of the Hrazdan River, where the stone memorial to the victims stands.
Protesters demand justice on a new anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Photo: EFE
On one side, a kind of great arrow of more than 40 meters guards
twelve basalt slabs
that symbolize the provinces that Armenia claims
to have lost to Turkish hands
.
In the center, the eternal flame lit by this ritual memory, was covered by a wall of thousands of red, white and violet flowers.
The "forgotten genocide"
The “forgotten genocide”, which gave Hitler wings to bathe history in blood, had three stages.
The first began between April 23 and 24, 1915, when the Young Turk government ordered the arrest, deportation, and murder of thousands of intellectuals, clergymen, writers, politicians, artists, teachers, and doctors who inhabited the current territory of Turkey.
Armenians came with flowers and flags to the memorial in Yerevan.
AFP photo.
First you had to finish with the ideas.
Then they went for men of Armenian origin and later for women, children and the elderly.
Few survived the massacres, torture and slow death of the forced exodus.
If human nature is tragic, more than a century ago, the ancestors of this town experienced the sum of all tragedies.
Argentine presence
Argentina, where some 135,000 Armenians live, had its official representation in the events in Yerevan.
In what is already a tradition, the Argentine ambassador in Armenia,
Mariano Vergara
, left a flower arrangement early in the morning at the entrance of the memorial.
Already at the official residence, and in conversation with
Clarín
, he reflected on the importance of keeping memory alive on what is the "most important date of the year" for Armenians, but he also warned about the "very difficult" moment he is going through this country of the South Caucasus in the face of the unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan over
the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Prime Minister of Armenia leaves a wreath at the Memorial.
Photo: EFE
“From 2020 to here, Armenia is a country that continues to live in a latent state of war, which has not ended, and that is felt.
The drama that the defeat in the 2020 war
was for the Armenian people
is still felt every day by the relatives of the fallen, by Embassy employees, by people who have lost a relative in this war.
It is a situation of deep regret that continues and worsens as this conflict is not resolved.
The Armenian people suffer from it and on a date like this, with even more reason.
It is a date of great distress ”, he synthesized.
Armenia is a country that was reduced to an area similar to that of
the province of Santa Cruz,
landlocked and inhabited by some three million people.
This April 24, more than a third of the population approached the foot of the monument, in silence, with their Armenian flags and a flower in their hands.
Ani lives and works in Yerevan.
This Monday she went to Tsitsernakaberd with her white carnation and a constant worry on her back.
Part of her uncles, her cousins and her grandparents' house
are in Nagorno
.
She says that her relatives can no longer leave or enter the territory freely, the food portions are increasingly smaller and access to medical care is alarming.
More than a million people came to the genocide memorial in Yerevan.
AFP photo.
On this day of commemorations, the Armenian Foreign Ministry also warned in an official statement that "unfortunately, today, just like a century ago, the danger of genocidal politics is felt in different parts of the world and the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh face the threat of genocide and ethnic cleansing."
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a brief war in 2020 for control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
The conflict ended with an Armenian military defeat and a ceasefire agreement, with Russia as mediator.
However,
the hostilities never ended.
The Argentine diaspora, present
In addition to the official representation, this country counts on each anniversary with the omnipresent presence of the Armenian diaspora in Argentina.
From Buenos Aires, Rubén Mozian, son of that great migration and victim of a genocide that killed his eight great-grandparents, appreciated that "regardless of the political orientation of people and social groups, the past has been successfully transmitted to new generations, who they continue to raise their voice for justice and reparation”, like this Monday, an ocean away.
Mozian warned that "Armenity around the world is following with great concern" the development of events in Nagorno.
"The indiscriminate intimidating attacks by the Azerbaijani armed forces against the civilian population demonstrate the sad reality of a State that does not pay attention to strictly humanitarian limits to achieve its objectives," he considered.
The connection between the countries is so strong that part of the Lachin corridor, the mountain pass that connects Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh and is currently blocked,
was partially paved
by money raised from the solidarity of
the Armenian diaspora in Argentina.
Young people at the forefront of memory
The flame of the events of this 24th began to light up on Sunday with the traditional torchlight march led by thousands of boys and girls.
Many of them in school or Scout uniforms;
some in small groups of friends and many others alone.
The mobilization started with an act in the imposing Plaza de la República.
From a stage located in the center of that great dry square, speeches from different political federations followed one another and after 8:30 p.m., like an icebreaker of darkness, the young people raised their torches and walked three kilometers to the memorial for those killed by the Armenian genocide. .
During its passage, the
crowd illuminated the center of Yerevan,
dominated by gray and dark ocher buildings.
Meanwhile, some curious people quickly took out their cell phones to photograph a postcard destined for social networks, and many others accompanied the procession in silence.
Davit and Arpi are 16 years old and are classmates.
They arrived at the memorial together to leave their flowers.
Two cameras were hung around their necks.
“When you are here you cannot see the true faces of the pain, but once we return home and see the photos we realize the wound left by the genocide,” the girl remarked.
Among the crowd that mobilized on Monday is Gagik, a young father who seeks to convey to his son the importance of continuing to remember those killed in the genocide.
He knows that nothing is more etched in the mind than the stories told during childhood.
Therefore, this 24 raised his son to upa and let her deposit the flower in the memorial with his little hands.
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