Armenia's Stand: Justice At Home, Justice Abroad

We are at the brink of a pair of wars, civil and regional, and it is better to speak now, writes Heritage Party leader, Armenian Center for National and International Studies (ACNIS) founder and president Raffi K. Hovannisian.

Armenia, that ancient civilization deprived by the tragedies of yore of its capacity for contemporary statecraft, immediately needs to put its house in democratic order. Finally responsible for its own record, it also has legitimate expectations of the international partnership.

In this global and so contracted century of ours, where resources and rights often compete for precedence, domestic demeanor and foreign affairs form part of one and the same policy agenda. Nuclear or not, all pieces count.

Armenia finally has to empower its citizenry, ensure due process and accountable government, and hold true elections. The corruption of state and its ill-disguised feudalesque vertical of post-Soviet power must give way to basic liberties and equal opportunities for all. Political prisoners should be released forthwith and those responsible for the deaths of ten citizens on March 1, 2008, brought to account. Justice must begin from within, or else civil strife is sure to ensue.

Modern independent statehood is an immeasurable gift that must not be squandered or ceded to anybody, friend or foe. Armenia’s security and armed forces are functions of its sovereignty, and no one, neither the Collective Security Treaty Organization nor NATO, should be called upon to guard its borders and its interests. Sound mutual relations with Russia, the United States, Europe and China are pivotally important, but Armenia must from now on be in sovereign command of its own frontiers and strategic assets. This choice should be universally respected.

The resetting of regional imperatives requires correlation with Armenia’s vital concerns.

Armenia and its people the world over shall never forget the great Genocide and the dispossession of their homeland. They cannot be expected, through protocols or other avenues of persuasion, to ratify their loss or to legitimize the fruits of genocide. These include an illegal de facto boundary negotiated by the Bolsheviks and Turkish Nationalists, the destruction of a thousand years worth of cultural heritage and architectural treasures, the mass expropriation of homes, schools, academies and other properties, and an abiding official escape from responsibility into the annals of schizophrenic denialism.

There is a growing current in Turkish society which seeks to look their history in the eye and thus to recast the exclusivist foundations of their state. They should be embraced and supported in their long-overdue self-discovery, just as the Turkish family who in 1915 saved my grandmother’s life by risking their own should find their due in the textbooks of tomorrow.