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  • The Only Way To Create A Prosperous And Secure Future For The Republ

    THE ONLY WAY TO CREATE A PROSPEROUS AND SECURE FUTURE FOR THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
    BY ARA PAPIAN

    Asbarez
    Monday, November 22nd, 2010

    The time has come that Armenia, anointed with the blood of her scions,
    demand reparations for the suffering and misfortune she has borne
    throughout the course of her history, become the master of her own
    destiny.

    - Nikoghayos Adonts, 1919. Armenian historian (1871-1942)

    Almost a century after these words were published in an epigraph, the
    ship of the fate of the Armenian people has not yet cast its anchors
    in the port of reparations. At the cost of the collective efforts
    of us all, centuries' worth of sacrifice and decades of staunch
    struggles, the ship of our fate approached the edge of reparations
    for a short time ninety years ago; it appeared, just for a moment,
    that the haven of reparations was within reach. But the political
    winds suddenly switched direction at the last second and hurled us
    towards the conspiratorial Kemalist-Bolshevik whirlpool.

    And, to this day, the ship of our fate is being knocked about in
    the tempestuous political sea. It is a sea with innumerable visible
    and hidden reefs, a sea teeming with pirates, a sea where our ship is
    wandering aimlessly, because the captain, instead of navigating towards
    a blessed asylum, is trying to come to terms with those very pirates
    by legitimizing their loot: an absolutely wrong and short-sighted act.

    There are decisive eras in the lives of peoples, when the entire
    future of that people is set on its course. We Armenians are currently
    at such a stage. The unfortunate pair of Armenia-Turkey protocols
    have upset the social and political life of all Armenians, they have
    sharpened the memory of national dispossession, and consolidated the
    desire to form a pan-national opposition against them. We are at a
    decisive state today, as the protocols are simply unacceptable. They
    are unacceptable from the point of view of the supreme and lasting
    interests of our people. The past of a people, the security of a
    nation, and the future of a state must not be sacrificed for the sake
    of temporary or factional interests.

    Ninety years ago, around this very time - on the 22nd of November,1920
    - the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, declared
    his arbitral award. The Wilsonian Arbitral Award, as I have had the
    opportunity to discuss, is the gospel of our rights, the basis of our
    demands, and the only way to create a prosperous and secure future
    for the Republic of Armenia.

    Let me very briefly turn to that extremely important document and
    point out just a few main clauses. Since the arbitral award was
    declared on the basis of the compromise of the Allied Powers at San
    Remo on the 26th of April, 1920, as well as in the Treaty of Sèvres
    (of the 10th of August, 1920), being enforced upon signing, that is,
    since the 22nd of November, 1920, therefore this award is a binding,
    inviolable and perpetual decision for all the Allied Powers of the
    First World War (which comprise more than a hundred countries today)
    and for all the states party to the Treaty of Sèvres (currently over
    twenty countries). It is also binding, inviolable and perpetual for the
    United States of America, as the arbitral award bears the Great Seal
    of the United States, signed by the US President and co-signed by the
    Secretary of State. In accordance with the prior written directive,
    the Wilsonian Arbitral Award is binding for the defeated countries
    of the First World War as well.

    As per the basic principles of international law, which are codified
    in the documents of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the
    realization of the arbitral award is the non-negotiable obligation and
    imperative duty of the parties to that document, that is, of all the
    countries signatory to the compromise. And so, our pan-national quest
    must be to demand of those countries on each 22nd of November to bear
    the responsibility of their obligation which stems from international
    law, and to do so not as some favor, but as a forgotten, partly denied,
    but nevertheless irrefutable and inviolable international obligation.

    It has been a few decades now that the 24th of April is marked as an
    important date on the Armenian calendar, a day which showcases perhaps
    the greatest manifestation of united Armenian political will. That day
    was initially a day of requiems, of a holy remembrance for the Armenian
    people, but then gradually grew to become a day of commemoration and of
    demanding the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Regardless, that is
    a day of loss, or, at the most, a day of recognizing the dispossession.

    As a nation, however, and as a community in pursuit of justice, we
    are in need of a day of victory and reparation, of the realization of
    justice and the establishment of our rights. We do have such a day:
    the 22nd of November maintains that inexhaustible fire of triumph,
    the day the arbitral award by the US President Woodrow Wilson deciding
    the border between Armenia and Turkey was declared. By the arbitral
    award, the Republic of Armenia got to include a part of our patrimony,
    the north-eastern part. That day, a ruling was made on the basis
    of international law and enforced once and for all, mandatory to
    be carried out, legally inviolable and perpetual in terms of the
    existence of our rights.

    The 22nd of November must become a day of restoration of violated
    justice, of national demands, and of the re-establishment of the
    rights that have been taken away from us; in a word, a Day of National
    Stewardship - Hayrenatiroutiun.

    I call upon us all to appropriately mark such a day on the 22nd of
    November each year - with rallies, marches, pickets, conferences,
    publications, speeches - as it is only through National Stewardship,
    through Hayrenatiroutiun, that we shall be able to build tomorrow's
    Armenia.

    Ara Papian is the head of the Modus Vivendi Center.




    From: A. Papazian
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