Don’t want to be long about it, everyone knows what it meant, but let’s only highlight that today, it’s been just 20 years since the devastating earthquake stroke Armenia. This exact day, 20 years ago, thousands of life changed radically, focusing the world’s attention on the little Armenia for a short while.
I was reminded it with a message sent by a new emerging Armenian political party where a friend get involved to - “Nazarpek” (Hentchak youth) and… by today’s insisting sermon of Hayr Murone Kewikian, priest of the Armenian apostolic church of Issy-les-Moulineaux. This church is something like the parish of Paris’ south suburb Armenians.
Without being a bigot (or at least hope so!), I just always appreciated this priest I know since childhood as great, and whose sermons later confirmed his great character. Listening him is always very interesting, more because it proposes strong principles for guiding life, religious aspects being just following them. And so his sermon was good to ear today, also drawing main lines of Armenians struggles… leading me here to write about them – but he’d probably be more indicated for blogging !
Nothing is really purposeless: this new party Nazarpek is probably at the origin of some awakening of Armenians about the law that would penalize negationism of the Armenian genocide. After the approval of this strong text by National Assembly 2 years ago, Senate’s vote about it is still missing. Last month, Armenians youth associations united began a regular sitting movement in front of the Senate twice a month. Sad to say our presence hasn’t been significant enough, far from it.
And this week, the French Government publicly said its refusal to put this question on Senate’s agenda, arguing that France should stop adopting new laws about memory… it’s the “
lois mémorielles” issue raised by historians here.
All this good-thinking-intelligentsia is mixing everything (various laws about very different histories of shameful acts as slavery, colonialism, negationism and its penalization …) under the sacred banner of preserving historians’ liberty to search. I may be too naïve, but still don’t understand how pure scientifics can seriously put all this different issues in the same pot and working everywhere,
gardzes unconsciously, to stop such advances as the recognition of how wrong can be a genocide’s negationism…
Apart from that, the roof of the Armenian church of Issy-les-Moulineaux is being renovated thanks to the Mayor’s help, in Clamart a concert would take place under the auspices of its mayor too, but an Armenian theater’s piece playing those days in Paris is looking for an Armenian audience, while it’s mostly a French public that assist those performances ! Where are we hidden ?
As Hayr Murone says, it’s hard to be Armenian : our presence is required almost each day, around each event organized for claiming, contributing to diaspora’s institutions survival, Armenia’s development, or supporting anything Armenian, etc but our lack of presence for demonstrations and so, all this looks like most of us are expecting from others the solution of our problems… doesn’t sound efficient, does it ?
There are many ways to be Armenian, and I must confess that my favorite is the universal side of Armenians : still deeply attached to the roots and traditions, but also able to speak and understand the others, even if different, and get enriched by this relations. This is what makes everything evolve and survive.
To illustrate this, here’s a nice video received today, and that seemed worthy to share. So to end on a positive note, it’s a nice example of what can bring an open observation of the world, with a "mash up" of the song "
stand by me"
And to all street musicians of the world : THANK YOU ! :o)
