AMAA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/CEO ZAVEN KHANJIAN’S ARMENIAN GENOCIDE COMMEMORATION MESSAGE
Սիրելի Հայրենակիցներ,
Dear Compatriots,
Dear Friends,
I hope this message finds each one of you and your loved ones healthy and well.
As I ponder on the heartbreaking fallout of the global pandemic, consuming the human mind and soul, and the occasion we are invited to commemorate today, I am reminded of the wisdom that comes from the Word of God (in Ecclesiastes 3) which says:
“There is a time for everything,
And a season for every activity under the heavens.
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,”
The past few months have been emotionally and physically draining for all of us in our country, in the Homeland and in the world, as an unprecedented and unimaginable reality has engulfed the world, dictating new norms of life.
The tragedy is tangible, as we witness the nation scramble to care for the inflicted, struggle to unearth lifesaving medical supplies, battle to stop the spread and mourn its victims, unable to give them the mannerly burial they deserve.
As thousands succumb to the wrath of the uninvited vile, hundreds of thousands of first respondents, medical doctors, nurses, public servants, good Samaritans, volunteers and NGOs are all around, round the clock, bringing care, cure, hope, and in many cases life to patients’ scrambling beds in hospitals or urgently erected medical facilities.
Hurray to all who have the calling, the commitment and/or obligation to reach out.
One hundred five years ago another vile called Ottoman Turkey, inflicted a premeditated physical obliteration upon a peaceful segment of its population living on their ancestral lands for a few millennia, long before the Turkish hoof treaded into the Near East, leaving death and destruction behind.
There is a time for everything.
Today, amid the coronavirus tragedy, we stop the ticking clock to honor the memory and pay respect to the Million and a half of our kin, who in the most brutal and inhumane manner were sickled to extinction. Our forebears fell victim, to satisfy the dark and blind hatred of an official, state organized crime, that would not tolerate a peaceful, productive, industrious Christian minority on the land.
There were no cameras to witness their forced deportation. There were no news media to report the ‘murder of a nation’. There were no first respondents on the thorny fields, rocky mountainous roads, blazing desert sand, treacherous barren undeveloped roads or dark and horrifying caves. There were no first respondents to care for a delivering mother or an orphaned child. No first respondents to quench a thirst or fight hunger. There were no first respondents to save a drowning teenager or a bride on fire, who rejected submission.
We salute the long anticipated and gratifying acknowledgment of the crime of Genocide by the US Congress in 2019 but despite a century of time for introversion, the heirs of the perpetrators remain remorseless with their conscious self-denial of the crime.
Today, they too are stricken by COVID 19. It is my prayer and wish, that like the whole world, the master of denial, Turkey too, will rid itself from the devastation and agony caused by the ailment and find peace.
There is a time for everything says the Bible.
Today, I am guided by the Word of God who said in Deuteronomy 32:35 “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.”
There is a time for everything.
Today, it is our time, to bow in respect of the fallen and reaffirm our collective quest for justice.
There is a time for everything.
Zaven Khanjian
AMAA Executive Director/CEO
April 24, 2020
