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Zaven Khanjian, AMAA Exec Director Delivers lecture on Hrant Dink

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  • Zaven Khanjian, AMAA Exec Director Delivers lecture on Hrant Dink

    Armenian Missionary Association of America
    PR/Communications Coordinator
    31 West Century Road
    Paramus, NJ 07652
    www.amaa.org
    Cell: 201.745.7496


    AMAA Executive Director Zaven Khanjian Delivers Hrant Dink Lecture


    Paramus, NJ - As part of the Armenian Missionary Association of
    America's commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian
    Genocide, AMAA Executive Director and CEO Zaven Khanjian delivered a
    memorial lecture about the life of Hrant Dink at the Armenian
    Presbyterian Church in Paramus, New Jersey on January 31.

    `Long before there was Je suis Charlie there was the slogan, We are
    all Armenian. We are all Hrant Dink,' Mr. Khanjian told a large and
    attentive audience, who had braved adverse winter weather to attend
    the presentation. Mr. Khanjian and his wife Sona befriended Hrant
    Dink shortly before Dink's death, and the lecture included not just a
    witness to the historical record, but personal reminiscences as well.
    The lecture's point of departure was an impromptu address Hrant Dink
    delivered at the United Armenian Congregational Church (UACC) in
    Hollywood, California, just months before Dink's death. In those
    remarks, Hrant Dink recalled his ties to the Armenian Evangelical
    movement, and in particular a youth camp in Tuzla, Turkey, that was
    dear to him.

    Hrant Dink told the UACC audience that as a boy he lived as an orphan
    in the `children's nest' (Bolso Badanegan Doon) on the bottom floor of
    the Armenian Evangelical Church in Gedik Pasa, Istanbul. The
    administrator of the orphanage, Hrant Guzelian had a dream of creating
    a summer facility where children could enjoy the outdoors and continue
    their Bible studies. And so, Guzellian began the Tuzla camp.

    But Dink recalled that in those early years, Tuzla was a far cry from
    our notion of a vacation camp. Tents were pitched, and at the age of
    eight, Hrant Dink along with a dozen other boys were taught
    construction skills, and began the hard work of building the facility
    that he would later describe as `heaven.' It was, he said, `an
    untouched shore with fine sand and a piece of lake formed from the
    sea...a sprinkling of fig and olive trees, and thorny raspberry bushes
    along the sides of the ditches.'

    Not only would Dink work, learn, and play at the Tuzla camp, but he
    eventually met his wife Rakel there, when she was brought to the camp
    as a seven-year-old Kurdish Armenian. `We grew up together. We got
    married there. Our children were born there.'

    But eventually, the Turkish government placed camp director Hrant
    Guzelian under arrest, on an accusation that he was `raising Armenian
    militants,' a notion that Dink ridiculed. `None of us was being
    raised as Armenian militants,' he said. But Guzelian's arrest left
    the camp without a leader and the church without a pastor. And so,
    every Sunday, Hrant and Rakel Dink would keep the church open: a guard
    at the door, Hrant Dink preaching the Bible from the pulpit, and Rakel
    and their three children comprising the entire congregation.

    Eventually, the Turkish government asserted that title to the Tuzla
    land had been granted to the Armenians in error, and evicted the
    children's camp altogether. To illustrate this portion of the
    lecture, Zaven Khanjian showed the audience the documentary `Swallow's
    Nest' by Sehbal Senyrt and Nedim Hazar, in which Hrant Dink is seen
    walking through the neglected ruins of the Tuzla camp, the `heaven' of
    his childhood and early adulthood. As he walks, Dink recalls the
    injustice of the seizure of the land, and finds in that experience the
    roots of his passion for social justice for Turkey's minority
    communities.

    Because of his advocacy as a journalist, Hrant Dink was eventually
    charged by the Turkish state with a violation of the infamous Article
    301, which criminalized offending Turkishness. He was convicted and
    given a suspended sentence, but Dink realized that, even if he was not
    sentenced to jail, the conviction made him a marked man. He remained
    in Turkey, he said, out of respect for the many thousands who
    supported him, but he said he lived like a pigeon, `obsessed just as
    much [by] what goes on my left, right, front, back. My head is just
    as mobile...and just fast enough to turn right away.'

    Dink continued, `I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I
    know that in this country people do not touch pigeons. Pigeons can
    live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.'

    Tragically, Hrant Dink would not share that freedom. On January 19,
    2007, a 17-year-old, Ogun Samast, shot Hrant Dink to death as he left
    his newspaper office. The subsequent investigation revealed that
    Samast was acting at the behest of members of the so-called `Deep
    State,' ultra-nationalist forces within Turkey, believed to include
    officials in government and law enforcement. Those legal proceedings
    continue.

    In recounting the life of Hrant Dink, Zavan Khanjian emphasized the
    values for which Dink lived and died. Those causes included the
    Christian faith he learned at Evangelical church, orphanage, and
    summer camp; and the inviolable civil rights of all minorities living
    in Turkey. Those causes also included a commitment to freedom of
    expression, a commitment so absolute that Dink vehemently opposed the
    enactment of a statute criminalizing Armenian Genocide denial in
    France.

    Mr. Khanjian ended on an optimistic note, predicting that the forces
    opposed to the truth will eventually be defeated, and expressing his
    hope that goodwill - and recognition of the truth of the Armenian
    Genocide - will prevail.




    From: A. Papazian
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