1988_12 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper December 1988

              December 1988
Hye Sharzhoom 10th Anniversary
Page 3
Thirty Terrible Seconds
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By Linda A. Abrahamian
Editor
The Armenian town of Spitak ceased to
exist at 11:41 Wednesday morning, it's
life snuffed out by an enormous
earthquake.
A tenth grader saw a hand sticking out
of the rubble. He recognized the ring on
the hand and started digging.
"Mama, give me your hand!"
He saved his mother. But others in his
family were dead.
"There are no lights in the houses. Even
on a dark night during the war it is never
so dark as this. We were ready to see the
worst, but what we really saw made us
realize that our imaginations were
inadequate."
"The atmosphere there is like a funeral.
Armenian television and radio play
mournful classical music for hours and
hours. When the music stops, the terrible
pictures begin again. It breaks your heart."
This is Armenia.
It happened on a Wednesday morning. A
Wednesday morning that seemed just like
any other Wednesday morning: people
working in the factories...women cooking
the mid-day meals...children studying their
lessons. There was no warning, no time to
take shelter. The earth shook and split
open, swallowing everything in its path.
Destruction has no prejudice. In a matter
of seconds, one of the leading
industrialized republics in the Soviet
Union was reduced to rubble. Destroyed.
Factories and homes crumbled...Children
buried alive in schoolhouses.
In a matter of seconds,
one of the leading
industrialized republics
in the Soviet Union was
reduced to rubble.
Nearly 100,000 Armenians are dead,
thousands more may still be trapped
beneath the rubble, and over 400,000 are
injured and homeless.
Armenians are not immune to
devastation...But the destruction they
know has not been cast down by the hand
of nature, but by man. In this century
alone, they have witnessed and survived a
Genocide. The world closed their eyes, and
plugged their ears to the cries of
Armenians pleading for help in WWI. As
a result over one million Armenians were
exterminated by the Ottoman Empire.
Today, however, the world is not closing
its eyes.
As a result, over one
million Armenians were
exterminated by the
Ottoman Empire.
Over twelve thousand Russian troops
are in Armenia now. They are completely
involved in rescue work. For hours on
end, Soviet soldiers, Armenian survivors,
and expert rescue teams from the West are
digging through the debris, hoping to save
those who are trapped in the rubble. They
hear screams, cries for help, and they dig
faster. The cries begin to fade after hours
of digging...Survival for those trapped is
grim...But they still dig. It seems
hopeless. It may in fact be hopeless for
those buried alive.
Hope is then for those who survived.
Over 400,000 residents of Armenia are
now homeless...Homeless in the dead of
winter. They live in the streets, among the
ruins, in make-shift tents. Most of their
personal belongings are unsalvageable.
They're cold and in need of warm clothing.
Food and water are scarce. The starving
Armenians are starving again. Many of the
injured are dying...dying because they lack
medical attention and supplies.
The starving Armenians        are        starving
again.
The Soviet Union has turned to the
West for help. Agencies in the US,
France, and England are sending medical
supplies, doctors, food, money, clothing,
everything and anything that is needed to
the region. The entire world, not only
Armenians in the Diaspora, seems to .be
concerned with aiding the victims of the
earthquake. Well, nearly the entire world...
The Azerbaijanis are using the chaos
caused by the destruction to their
advantage. Up until the earthquake, Soviet
troops have been present in Azerbaijan to
police the conflicts between Armenians
and Turks in the region of Karabagh.
The Azerbaijanis are
using the chaos caused
by the destruction to
their advantage.
Those troops, however, have been
transferred to Armenia to aid in the rescue
efforts. The Azerbaijani Turks, then, have
again waged their campaign of terror
against the unprotected Armenians in the
region. Shortly after the troops were
transferred, at least six Armenian homes
were burned and looted. It seems that the
Armenians in the Soviet Union have
fallen victim twice in one week: first to
destruction caused by nature, and secondly
to destruction caused by human prejudice.
This, then, is Armenia today. The small
nation that had to rebuild itself after a
Genocide must now rebuild itself again.
The people, however, will not lose hope.
Armenians are a race of survivors...They
are not afraid to ask for help...They now
must ask for help...And help is what we
must give them.
Mass Movements in Armenia Foretell Change
By Barlow Der Mugrdechian
Advisor
The political rumblings emanating from
Armenia represent the awakening of a
giant- a unified Armenian people. When I
was in Armenia in June of this year the
nascent political movement had only just
begun to coalesce and become embodied
into the Karabagh Committee. The
Commute has now taken overall
leadership of the people's movement,
which has been the most significant in the
history of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of
thousands of Armenians have been
gathering at weekly meetings which have
taken place in the Opfera square or more
recently in front of the Madenataran
(Manuscript Library). Their demands have
centered on the reunification of Karabagh
to Armenia- a call echoing the demands of
Karabagh Armenians themselves. But the
movement has spread far beyond this issue
to encompass such questions as the quality
of life, pollution, and the endemic
corruption in Armenia.
Strikes have been the most effective
tool for the masses to express then-
outrage at the recent negative decisions
taken by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow
regarding the reunification of Karabagh.
Armenians are still outraged at the lack of
quick action to determine the culprits
responsible for the wide ranging pogroms
against Armenians in Azerbaijan. It is
only recently that one of three Azeri
defendants was convicted of inciting a
crowd to riot and was sentenced to death.
The prosecution case has taken many
months since the actual crimes took place
late in February of 1988.
Armenians are wondering why
Azerbaijani police and officials watched as
hundreds more Armenians were killed or
injured in Kirovabad in a violent response
to the conviction of Ahmed I. Ahmedov in
Moscow.
The events of the past nine months
have been stark evidence as to the failure
of the policies of perestroika and
especially glasnost in the question of
nationalities. For the Armenian people the
lesson has been one learned at the cost of
bloodshed- a result of the obedience of the
Armenians to peaceful means as contrasted
to the bloody policies of the Azerbaijani
officials and crowds.
What started in February of 1988 as a
protest against the continued oppression of
the Armenian majority in Karabagh by the
Azerbaijani government has now become a
movement for the transformation of
Armenian national consciousness. A
movement, broadly based and without the
support of official Armenia, has become
the embodiment of participatory democracy. In perhaps the most striking example
of this, on October 9 of this year, two
write-in candidates, Khatchik Stam-
booltsyan and Ashot Manoocharian, a
member of the Karabagh Committee,
defeated established incumbents in races
for the post of Deputy to the Armenian
Supreme Soviet in Yerevan. Neither of the
two are members of the Communist party
and are the first independent candidates to
sit in the Armenian Supreme Soviet
Moscow has recendy attempted to
subvert the authority of the Karabagh
Committee, which has the allegiance of a
majority of the people, through the
formation of competing bodies whose
membership is composed largely of now
discredited writers and intellectuals. But
the attempts to suffocate the still
burgeoning movement have so far been in
via and the anti-central government
feeling has continued to grow. In the face
of thousands of Soviet troops which have
recendy poured in to Yerevan, and the
curfew which is in effect in the city, mass
meetings have continued to take place on
Friday evenings.
Proposed economic reforms for
Karabagh have not been accepted at face
value from a populace used to decades of
discrimination and oppression. The Azerbaijani plan is to eliminate the Armenian
population from Karabagh in the same in
which they have succeeded in
Nakhitchevan, a formerly Armenian populated region which borders on Armenia
but which is governed by Azerbaijan.
Nakhitchevan is an ancient center of
Armenian life with thousands of
monuments such as churches and stone-
crosses which attest to the rich cultural
life which Armenians once enjoyed there.
Some have questioned the political
acumen of the Karabagh Committee for
calling on the people to strike and to
continue to meet in defiance of authorities
calls for "calm." But in response to this
one would have to say that the proper
moment had been reached where hundreds
of thousands of people could be mobilized
not for simply one day but for months-
indicating the total support of the people
and their willingness to sacrifice to
achieve their goals.
The argument put forth in Pravda and
parroted by the U.S. press has been that
Armenian demands and actions have
undermined the policies of M. Gorbachev
at a time when there seems to be real
progress on such issues as human rights
within the Soviet Union and a reduction in
the arms race with the Unitesd States is a
real possibility. The policies in question,
namely a restructuring of the Soviet
economy and the publication or propaganda of certain issues are in fact the very
policies which Armenians have supported
from the outset. The Armenian people
have been in the forefront of the changes
and have wholeheartedly endorsed them,
but because they have accepted them so
easily and completely, this has left them
in the position of bearing the criticism
directed at those policies. It is paradoxical
that Gorbachev himself has participated in
these criticisms and there is disillusionment of the masses in Armenia
because of this. It would seem that Soviet
authorities should apply these new
policies towards the questions of
nationalities and right the historic wrong
committed by Stalin, namely the arbitrary
assignment of Karabagh to Azerbaijan and
the subsequent sixty or more years of
suffering caused by that move.
That is the point which the U.S. press
has failed to adequately explain and by not
doing so has misled the public by
portraying the disturbances in the
Caucasus region as one of a centuries-long
feud between Muslim Azerbaijanis and
Christian Armenians. This simplistic
approach neglects the political factors in
which Stalin played the major role.
The idea of a feud also diminishes the
question of responsibility in the face of
deaths which have occurred over the last
several months. Often it seems that
Christian and Muslims are attacking each
other and that equal numbers are dying, so
that responsibility can be equally
apportioned between the two sides, after
all, would the Turks have killed
Armenians for no reason? What is not
made clear is that it is the Armenians who
are being massacred in large numbers in
these pogroms in areas where they
consitute a minority. Such was the case in
Sumgait in February and in.Kirovabad in
November. Both of these cities are in
Azerbaijan, both are inhabited by
Armenian minorities, and in both areas the
massacres were carried out over a period of
. days in a detailed and premeditated fashion.
Azerbaijani police and authorities did
nothing to prevent the deaths and ignored
the pleas of Armenians. The barbarous
nature of the muders, rape, and pillaging
were also of an unprecedented scope.
Reponsibility must be laid at the doorstep
of Azerbaijan.
Armenians are being held as virtual
hostages in a situation in which many
have had no choice but to flee for their
lives to Armenia. As for Armenians, they
.treat the minorities in their own republic
with the respect deserved of fellow
citizens.
The last nine months have been a
turning point in modem Armenian history
and certainly that there will be no turning
back the clock. Armenians will now
express their opinions freely and seek to
resolve the Karabagh issue favorably.
There are several solutions which now
seem possible, among which is the idea of
removing Karabagh from Azerbaijani
jurisdiction and associating it to the
Russian Federated Soviet Republic. The
next few months will continue to be
pivotal-for once the question of Karabagh
has been settled more issues will have to
be resolved-the environment, nuclear
energy, jobs, and housing.