Abraham Gasparyan, Nikol Pashinyan & His Attempts to Suffocate Freedom of Speech

 

For those who are not very familiar with the background of the story, I strongly recommend watching the following interview of Prof. Gasparyan:

 #ՈւՂԻՂ. Աբրահամ Գասպարյանը օդանավակայանից մեկնաբանում է Թեհրանում կատարվածը

 Abraham Gasparyan comments on what happened in Tehran from the airport

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxWer9iT1Do

 In any democracy freedom of expression is one of the most revered principles that contributes to a healthy criticism of a regime, promotes accountability, and shapes guidelines that forge the future of a country.

 Though technically Armenia is considered a democracy where the leadership should not disdain the notion of accountability, and a mature population should be able to distinguish the difference between respecting the interests of The State and complying with the whimsical dictates of a Prime Minister who has a fragile ego, it seems that the “Enemy Appeasing Collaborationist” government of PM Pashinyan can adopt without impunity measures that are antithetical to basic democratic principles, and pretend that trampling on sacred democratic principles was exercised to protect the vested interests of the Nation.

 For years Nikol Pashinyan implemented the practice of deporting from the Zevartnots Airport ARF leaders and their families simply because they dared to criticize Pashinyan’s myopic foreign policy. This week, Pashinyan introduced a new measure into his existing arsenal of psychological warfare-banning Armenian intellectuals from any speaking engagements, in a foreign country, where a wave of criticism can target the ill-designed policies of his “Collaborationist” government.

The first victim of Pashinyan’s psychological terror was Prof. Abraham Gasparyan, the director of the Armenian think tank “Genesis Armenia”. Invited to Tehran for lectures, academic encounters, and media interiews, Pashinyan via the Armenian Embassy in Tehran, pressured the Iranian government to ban all the public appearances of Prof. Gasparyan, especially the one dedicated to the commemoration of the 110th anniversary of The Armenian Genocide of 1915.

 Unfortunately, the Iranian government complied with the demand imposed by Pashinyan without realizing that a person who has betrayed his own nation, sacrificed senselessly 5,000 Armenian brave soldiers, and sold Artsakh to Aliyev, will casually sacrifice the interests of Iran, and will allow Israeli bombers to use Armenia’s airspace in their flights originating in Azerbaijan’s territory, and having for objectives the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities.

 Prof. Gasparyan’s resolve is unscathed. He will remain loyal to the path he chose to defend the sanctity of a land we call Armenia. He will work tirelessly for Artsakh’s right for self-determination, and he will never allow Pashinyan and his “Junta” to destroy “Historical Armenia” in the name of building a “Real Armenia” in the image of Aliyev and Erdogan.

 Now we understand why Armenian academics have labelled Pashinyan as

 “Loyal servant of the interests of Ankara and Baku, and also the humble enabler of “The Greater Turan” dream (Pan-Turkism)."

 Անկարայի և Բաքվի շահերի հավատարիմ ծառան, ինչպես նաև «Մեծ Թուրան» երազանքի (պանթուրքիզմ) համեստ քարոզիչը.

 https://artsakhtheinadequateresponse.blogspot.com/2023/05/is-treachery-dominant-trait-of.html 

 Արդյո՞ք դավաճանությունը Փաշինյան ընտանիքի գերիշխող հատկանիշն է 

 https://artsakhtheinadequateresponse.blogspot.com/2024/09/blog-post.html 

 Here is an English Google translation of the full text of the banned speech of Prof. Gasparyan. The original Armenian version ca be accessed at the following link:

 Աբրահամ Գասպարյանի՝ Թեհրանում արգելված ելույթի տեքստը

 https://abcmedia.am/glxavor-noruthyunner/149177/ 

 With a sense of gratitude and love, I accepted the invitation of the Armenian National Committee of Iran to speak at the central event organized on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. It is an honor and a binding responsibility to speak before a community that is not only close to my heart, but also the heart of the Armenian and Armenian idea for at least several centuries. I did not come empty-handed. I brought from Yerevan the traditional motto of the March, the spirit of the eternal fire, the demanding and unbreakable will of the youth, together with you to keep the memory of the victims of the Genocide alive, to reflect, to discuss the challenges of the Armenian and Armenian national political agenda, to talk about the necessity of the collective return of Artsakh, to offer sensible and realistic solutions to ensure the security of the eastern part of our homeland, the Republic of Armenia.

 The commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide is not only a tribute to me, but also a responsibility passed down from generation to generation, not only to the victims, but also to those who survived, those who survived and those who rose again. The anniversary is a responsibility to realize that, first and foremost, the goal of the struggle to prevent the Genocide is to ensure the security of the Armenian people and the state they inherited, and in terms of values and morals, it is a mission to voice the truth. We are obliged to speak not only about what happened in 1915, but also about what is happening today, before our eyes, when the rewritten genocidal policy is being implemented under the criminal silence of our own state. The thesis that the Armenians were subjected to genocide because they did not have a state at their head is false and incomplete. The deprivation of the homeland of Artsakh proved the opposite. There was a state, Yerevan knew everything, but did not prevent the deprivation of the homeland. The goal of such illogical theses is to justify Turkish complicity and to wash the hands of the genocidal country, the Ottoman Empire, and its successor, the Republic of Turkey, from the responsibility for planning, organizing, and coordinating the genocide, depriving the Armenians of their property, and expel them of their homeland.

 It is an obvious fact that within the framework of international law, the genocide has been recognized as a crime against humanity, and its denial or oblivion is an immoral historical falsification and a crime. And the recognition of the genocide is not complete when it is not followed by the restoration of justice. In this matter, we, Armenians, are still victims of a half-recognized truth. And this cannot continue forever, otherwise we will hand over to the grave our natural right to exist in our own homeland with our own hands. Recognizing the genocide without responsibility means turning it into a ritual, and we need justice, not at the symbolic, but at the legal and political level. Recognition in itself is not condemnation. And condemnation without restitution is an unanswerable crime. Therefore, the next stage of the 110-year-long struggle should be the establishment of a legal framework, and not its emotional interpretation, that is, the demand for the restoration of documented property, international lobbying, compensation, return. And I say this as a great-grandson of a Western Armenian and Cilician who survived the Genocide, whose grandfathers fought until the last bullet, instead of surrendering and crying, as was fashionable at the time.

 Our people living on the Eastern Armenian land are facing complex military, political, and security challenges these days. In the conditions of the formation of a new world order, state thinking, cold calculation, awareness of national and state interests, and not resorting to adventurism are paramount.

 With maniacal enthusiasm, the Armenian state propaganda machine is flooded with anti-scientific, anti-civilizational interpretations about the motives of the Armenian Genocide, which not only strike at the political struggle of the Armenian people, but also challenge the entire civilized world, which has studied, researched, concluded, recognized, and condemned the inscrutable reality of the Genocide in thousands of volumes.

 The issue of the Armenian Genocide is not only a component of national identity, not only a matter of restoring historical justice, but also a matter of international humanitarian and criminal law, which cannot be ignored.

In fact, the coordinated Turkish-Azerbaijani blockade imposed on Armenia, the hostile anti-Armenian rhetoric have been combined with the failure of the state’s seven-year foreign and security policy. Moreover, due to this short-sighted and deliberately pursued policy, Armenia has moved from the negotiating table to the floor and is step by step fulfilling the capitulation demands of the hostile tandem, the humiliating consequence of which will be the vital loss of independence, sovereignty, and possibly even territorial integrity. The target is Syunik, Tavush, Gegharkunik and Ararat regions.

 The current government of Armenia continues to speak with irony, incorrect and unacceptable interpretations, with fabricated and false theses that contradict national and state interests, and with openly  offensive labels about the highest achievement of the political organization of the Armenian people - the Declaration of Independence of the state. The government is preparing the ground to please its counterparts in Ankara and Baku, to ensure its own political longevity and to prepare the ground for the Armenians to renounce the Declaration of Independence adopted on August 23, 1990, which clearly refers to two ontological issues, firstly, that the newly independent Armenian state supports the cause of the Western Armenians subjected to the genocide and secondly, it supports the right of Artsakh to self-determination. The withdrawal of these two principles or the rejection of any of them will mean the end of the Third Armenian Republic.   

 We are politically mature and aware enough, far from senseless pathos, to be able to distinguish between a healthy and reasonable opportunity to establish normal relations between states and unilateral capitulation. The issue of the Armenian Genocide is related especially to the national security of the Entente states, therefore, any attempt to distort or transform the issue will legitimize the Turkish script of new genocides and new crimes against humanity. The problem of the Armenian people is not with the Turkish people, but with the Turkish denialist state machine, which, 110 years after the genocide, continues to maintain Armenophobia and hostile rhetoric against the Republic of Armenia at the forefront, despite the fact that official Yerevan is pursuing a capitulationist and pro-Turkish policy.

 Arbitrary, distorted, valueless and meaningless interpretations of the provisions of the Declaration of Independence and state symbols, bankrupt and dwarfish steps to reinterpret the history of the Armenian people, attempts to devalue the idea of ​​Armenians and Armenia under the guise of critical thinking only corrupt the main condition for building and developing a state: public solidarity.

 Independence is the political wisdom of our collective organization, respecting law and order, being educated with values, being armed with knowledge, creating, developing, keeping pace with the technological achievements of the time, an indicator of the spiritual and intellectual development of the nation, the degree of civilizational maturity, the commitment and responsibility for state-building, the realization of national aspirations. All of this, legally and objectively, cannot be opposed to the agenda of international recognition, condemnation and rule of law of the Armenian Genocide, which has been artificially pushed out of the political and diplomatic agenda of the Republic of Armenia. It is an adventure that whets the appetite for new and destructive concessions to the enemy who is trying to bring down Armenia and the Armenian people to their knees.  

 The superficial name of the process is peace, which is undignified, based on unilateral, damaging concessions. The establishment of a stable, lasting, hopeful, just and comprehensive peace in the region implies the elimination of the threat of force, the withdrawal of the Azerbaijani occupation troops from the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia, comprehensive security guarantees, the clarification of the status of Artsakh, and the implementation of geopolitical and power balances in the region. In the context of the latter, perhaps the only positive development that we have witnessed in the past 5 years, after the 44-day war, were the joint Armenian-Iranian military exercises, in the implementation of which it is impossible not to appreciate the active role and hard work of the political structures of the organized Iranian-Armenian community. 

As the director of the Genesis Armenia think tank/foundation, I have repeatedly emphasized the need to implement a vertical diplomatic axis, the Moscow-Yerevan-Tehran strategic axis, despite all the political adventurers in our region who want to turn East-West into a new battlefield: I believe that the Yerevan-Tehran allied relations have not only political and security significance, but also civilizational. The one who destabilizes the Armenia-Iran border is the enemy of Armenia and the Armenian people, regardless of its scale, capabilities and regional weight. It is precisely the active role of Iran that inhibits the aggressive actions of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem against Armenia. The Armenian people will not forget their friends of difficult days.

 At the same time, I would like to state that it is a delusion, ignorance, and political immaturity to link the defence of one's own state, the natural right of a nation to exist and develop, with other states or forces. The national-state interest of Armenia, Artsakh, and the Armenian people excludes distrust, flattering empty hopes, miscalculated approaches, the result of which is collective physical destruction and deprivation of the homeland. 1915 is a witness. The guarantor of our security is us, the Armenian Army, whose role we must cherish and thwart all attempts to devalue, belittle, and demoralize this vital institution.

 The return of the Armenian security and Armenian factor has several key components: a technologically developed, economically powerful, combat-ready state with an army, realism, correct international rhetoric, flexible diplomacy, allies. And I will disappoint all those political pathetics who will try to manipulate that such an agenda is revanchist and contradicts the security of the region. What I am saying is the prerequisite for the only and real peace agenda in the region. If there is no balance of power, international mechanisms to prevent a new war, if in ideological terms that peace document is not fair, not comprehensive, does not take into account the interests of the people of Armenia and Artsakh, then it is a false peace, moreover, a prerequisite for a new war and the destruction of at least one of the sides.

  Dear compatriots,

 Artsakh is a symbol of the just struggle of all disenfranchised nations of the world, a crucial component of the collective identity of Armenians. For this reason, there must be consensus among the key political and civil structures, unions, parties and influential forces of the Republic of Armenia, Artsakh  and the Diaspora  to declare the issue of the return of the Artsakh people to their homeland a priority of the national political agenda. The issue of Artsakh has not been closed, moreover, the issue of a dignified, safe and collective return continues to remain on the South Caucasian political agenda of states, naturally excluding Turkey and official Yerevan.

 The disregard for the collective right of the people deprived of their homeland as a result of the one-day war unleashed on September 19, 2023 against Artsakh, the vandalistic destruction of Artsakh’s historical and cultural heritage, the illegal hostage-taking of Artsakh’s military and political leadership in Baku prisons and the initiation of fabricated criminal cases against them, the incessant demands for the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia, and the occupation of strategic territories of the Republic of Armenia once again prove that Baku is not sincere and consistent in establishing relations with official Yerevan, in making the peace process stable, reliable, fixed and guaranteed by international mechanisms long-lasting. Baku’s goals are deeper and long-term: to turn Armenia into a dwarf state in the South Caucasus, a toothless vassal territory, devoid of water resources, a transit corridor for the Turkic world, a puppet entity without an army and combat capability.

 In 1915, Turkey thought it had provided a “final solution” to the Armenian question. They failed. Whoever defended themselves was saved, whoever believed in the false words of peace and brotherhood was massacred. A century after the genocide, the picture repeated itself. In 2023, the picture repeated itself in Artsakh: war, blockade, famine, victims, deprivation of homeland. Now is not the time to talk about losses, we need to talk about the legal continuity of the genocidal policy.

 We must place the Artsakh issue at the center of the strategy for international recognition of the Genocide. Not as a separate page from a folder, but as a continuation of the Armenian Genocide, a gross violation of the equality of nations and the natural right to self-determination.

 We cannot change the past, but we must prevent its repetition. History repeats itself only among illiterate peoples. For those who draw the right conclusions from the lessons of history, political thinking and pro-state positions become an everyday exercise. A citizen who has learned the right lesson from history at least once knows that one must create support within one’s own country, not rely on a foreigner. It is such a citizen who, when ascending the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex, becomes not a keeper of memory, but a holder of rights, not an heir, but a creator, not a homelandless person, but a returnee.

 And when we chant the slogan "Never Again," we do not say it as victims of a genocide, but as a people who have survived, built, and are ready to restore their stolen rights, which are timeless. Therefore, our struggle today is not for the commemoration of the past, but for the Armenia of the future.

 A self-centered Armenian who is defeated inside, lives with a longing for justice, has shackles to his creative mind and arms, has no ideal and collective dream, will not achieve any victory outside. We have that ideal: Armenia must become a modern state with a growing population, educated and values-bearing youth, a powerful economy and a strong army, whose citizens will carry the blue passport of the Republic of Armenia with a vibrant pride. For this, we need a spirit, a living spirit, which will give us the strength to dream and set goals. This is the dream of every Armenian. Woe to the people whose dream is not powerfully articulated. We must be able to turn that dream into a goal with sensible and realistic solutions and bring it to life, dividing responsibility between generations.

 We have fallen and been crushed more than once. The important thing is not to give up, not to be discouraged, not to surrender, not to become a prisoner and slave to adaptation. Remember, we must respond harshly to the blows inflicted on the Armenian national consciousness. The weakening of national consciousness will lead us to the loss of identity, will turn us into a nationless mass seeking the path of migration, praising the power of a foreign crown.

 The most precious factor in the life of nations, the foundation for creation, is the homeland, and the state is its toolkit. A people without a homeland cannot create a state. The homeland is not a place of immorality for collecting taxes, establishing one's own dictatorship, or obediently serving a foreigner. The state must survive for a long time, it must educate, nurture, create generations, it must be able to unite the collective efforts of the nation's children in order to deserve the sun of the homeland. Nations become eternal when all its human, intellectual, moral, and material potential is put on the table for the liberation of the homeland and the creation of a just social order.

 To have a homeland, you must fight not against an external enemy, but, first of all, against an oppressive, exploitative, unjust, and tyrannical ruler... in other cases, the homeland becomes just a geographical concept, a blank space, which today will be called a state, tomorrow will remain in history textbooks as a former place. If you have a homeland, then you have a prerequisite for spiritual, intellectual, physical, and natural development. All politically mature nations,   groups, and organizations cannot succeed if the lines and footnotes of ideology do not include the creation of one's own independent and free homeland, the liberation of the individual and the collective from violence, ignorance, and injustice. It is precisely for this reason that the most terrible crime against all humanity is the deprivation of a homeland, and on the contrary, the most cherished mission in human history is homeland building. Any sparing of abilities on this path is not only unforgivable, but also a waste of individual and collective forces. And only through daily work does homeland building become a belief, a collective lasting value, and capital, which is inherited from generation to generation.

 Let us not be mistaken: the state is never and never the homeland. The state is a physical part of the homeland. The homeland is not just a territory, but a set of values, well-being, security and sovereignty that people feel when the state gives them citizenship, a dignified life, confidence and a vision of the future. The state grows and develops when it is guided by national interests, when the economy works for the benefit of the people, when the security system is strong, and when education prepares thinking, strong citizens, not a fashion platform.

 Ours is Armenia, simply Armenia, without labels: old, new, real or fashionable. Armenia is not a geographical term or a place, drawn by the ruler of this or that bandit… Armenia is an ideology in one place. Believe me, all those forces, big and small fake parties, individual actors who seize the consciousness of the Armenian people, the will to live and create in a free and complete homeland, will face the terrible judgment of the Armenian people. And all those who pour water into the mill of denial and revision of history will be thrown into the garbage dump of history.

 Cowardly states have no place in history. Memory is a powerful weapon only when it is put into action. I appeal to my dear young people gathered in the hall: Your generation must break the political superstition that “Armenia is small, weak, we cannot.”

No, Armenia is as small as our responsibility is small. And when the sentence of the knightly song “A letter has come from the depths of Persia” sounds from the lips of all of us… know for sure that you are the vigilant guardian of the rebirth of Armenianness, the true faith in patriotism, the national-state agenda of Armenia, Artsakh and the Armenian people, the right to which you have inherited, on the streets and in the offices of Jugha, Rasht, Tabriz, Urmia, Khoy, Salmast and Tehran, sparing nothing that is most precious for the eternity of Armenians and Armenia: the Ephrems, Minasyans, Ter-Grigoryans, Marukhyans.

 Incense and candles burned in memory of the innocent victims of the Genocide, and to us, a mind, a strong arm, an unbreakable will to restore patriotism and our inalienable rights. Be strong."