11/11/2020
Dear friends, especially my non-Armenian friends. Are you there? Have I got your attention? I do? Then thank you. I appreciate your presence.
This is Dadivank, an Armenian monastery in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) built between the 9th and 13th centuries - over a thousand years ago. Still standing. Beautiful isn't it?
This is a cultural heritage that belongs to not only Armenians, but to Christianity and the whole world. This is the best of us. This is what we can do when we are not hell bent on destruction. This land is littered with similar treasures.
The "deal" agreed yesterday between Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to end the war puts the complex under Azeri control.
Please. Take a long look. Remember it. Imprint its exquisite architecture into your mind. Think about what it took to build something that has lasted for a millennia.
Why?
Because it's likely to be reduced to rubble to feed the false Azeri and Turkish narrative that Armenians are squatters on this land. Its treasures have been removed to safety. The people it served are long gone. It is now hostage to fortune.
This is what we Armenians call the "White Genocide" - the obliteration of our culture and our historic legacy by revisionists and extremists who cannot see its beauty, cannot create it, cannot appreciate that it transcends nationalism and religion.
I pray it survives. If it does not, then at least you - my dear friends who cared to look, appreciate, reflect and learn - rather than scroll by - have seen it. I can't ask you to feel our pain. We all have enough of our own to bear. All that I can ask is that you are witness to it.
