California’s Armenian diaspora sees another genocide happening in homeland | Opinion
California is home to the largest population of Armenian-Americans in the Diaspora and Fresno, for more than a century, has been a traditional landing ground where many of the thousands of survivors ended up as a result of the genocide committed by Ottoman Turks over a century ago.
Over the past 10 months, the Aliyev totalitarian regime of Azerbaijan has blocked the only road connecting Artsakh to the free world through Armenia, called the Lachin Corridor. Azerbaijan started this 21st century genocide of Armenians by cutting off food, medicine and any humanitarian supplies to the historic Armenian enclave of Artsakh, which totals over 120,000.
While the world has been fixated on fighting between Ukraine and Russia, Artsakh was left to be protected by Russian peacekeepers. Few people noticed that the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbajian, Turkey and Russia signed a pact which in essence set the stage for the terrible news on Sept. 19 that Azerbaijan had begun shelling the independent republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh.
Using heavy artillery, buildings were hit, and women, children and the elderly were slaughtered. Reports suggest that among the hundreds of casualties, there were deaths of schoolchildren walking home. Beheadings of children have been caught on tape and the Azeri atrocities are too numerous to list.
Only 24 hours before this shelling began, a cynic might say what provoked this genocide was the opening of the corridor to humanitarian aid, which the Azeri warlord — Aliyev — couldn’t tolerate. The day after the atrocities, the slaughter was celebrated on the streets of Azerbaijan. The 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh, who the world and the United States ignored while funding Ukraine’s resistance against Russia, have not only been abandoned, but we are witnessing another Armenian genocide with our very eyes.
What is particularly galling to many in the Diaspora is that while we send billions in aid overseas to Ukraine, and their totalitarian ally Azerbaijan receives hundreds of millions in U.S. aid, the Democratic, oldest Christian nation in the world — Armenia — is left on its own against the oil rich authoritarian Azerbaijan regime, which has never had a democratically elected government.
Azerbaijan has actually announced election results before polls closed, which tells us how its leaders operate. The vice president of the country is Aliyev’s wife.
Meanwhile, it’s reported that at least five Russian so-called peacekeepers were killed during the Azeri raid, leading many in and out of Russia to compare the Artsakh debacle to the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.
We in the Diaspora watch in horror, but are determined that “Never Again.”
Mark Geragos is an Armenian American practicing law in Los Angeles. His mother was born and raised in Fresno, attended Fresno High and earned her college degree at Fresno State. Sevag Tateosian is a grandchild of survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and is host and producer of San Joaquin Spotlight.
