Harut Sassounian: Would Torosyan and Pashinyan extend their anti-Armenian positions to welcoming the 300,000 Azeris to Armenia?
Talaat Pasha, the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide, wrote in a letter in 1915: “We wanted to leave behind one Armenian, and only in a museum.”
If the current disastrous trends in Armenia continue, what Talaat planned to carry out, but did not fully succeed, is being accomplished by the Armenian government, writes Harut Sassounian, the publisher and editor of The California Courier.
Arsen Torosyan, a high-ranking official of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government, announced in the Armenian Parliament in May: “We need to organize immigration, even if it doesn’t fit with the so-called national ideas. Tens of thousands of people need to immigrate here.
This is an anti-Armenian notion just like Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s almost every other action. Any sensible Armenian leader, before rushing to import tens of thousands of non-Armenians to Armenia, would try to entice some of the seven million members of the Armenian Diaspora to immigrate to Armenia.
Instead, Pashinyan is busy rejecting Armenia’s history and culture, and now diluting its demographics. He first gave away the Armenian region of Artsakh to Azerbaijan, after sacrificing thousands of young Armenian soldiers. He then permitted Azerbaijan to occupy parts of the Republic of Armenia starting in 2021 and 2022. He is now talking about giving Tigranashen to Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan went on to devalue sacrosanct Armenian nationalistic symbols like Mount Ararat.
Before we worry about the Armenian government welcoming Diaspora Armenians, we should be more alarmed about the blocking of its own citizens from coming to Armenia to vote on election day. The Armenian Parliament just passed a law that requires that those citizens who are coming home to vote must first live in Armenia for one year. This is an abuse of the citizens’ most basic democratic right.
The government is also making it much more difficult for Diaspora Armenians to acquire Armenian citizenship․
The scariest part of the Armenian officials’ talk about bringing non-Armenians to live in Armenia is paving the way for 300,000 Azeris to move to Armenia which would be the end of the Republics of Armenia. ”For months now, Pres. Aliyev has been demanding that the Armenian government accept 300,000 Azeris to emigrate to Amenia. Aliyev has already renamed Armenia “Western Azerbaijan.” Would Torosyan and Pashinyan extend their anti-Armenian positions to welcoming the 300,000 Azeris to Armenia? Sadly, I think this is a distinct possibility. If that is not enough to destroy Armenia, there are millions of Turks who live across the border from Armenia. Would Armenia’s leaders to be so brazen as to invite a very large number of Turks to move to Armenia? I am afraid they may,” the author writes.
