Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Today Armenia marked the 18th Anniversary of the anti-Armenian pogroms that took place in the industrial city of Sumgait in Eastern Azerbaijan. The violence that left 32 Armenians dead marked the start of inter-ethnic conflict over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh that later turned into full scale war. Unfortunately, I missed the main event in Yerevan’s Republic Square, but was at least able to accompany a group of a few hundred students from Amirian Street to Tsitsernakaberd.

The protest took on special significance this year because of a new push to end the Karabakh conflict and the murder two years ago of an Armenian soldier by his Azerbaijani counterpart in Budapest, Hungary. PanArmenian.net puts the number of those attending “in their thousands,” and says that an appeal to the international community was also adopted by participants.

Nevertheless, as with most public meetings in Armenia, not everyone gathered for the event on their own accord. According to one teacher at the Yerevan State Humanitarian College, for example, students were taken to the event by their lecturers. This appears to be confirmed by Garo (AKA Christian Garbis) over at Notes from Hairenik.

From what I saw at the rally and on the streets, the overwhelming majority of the attendees were youth. Apparently universities let out classes early in response to requests from political parties for students to attend the rally. Thousands of people were purportedly bused in from the regions. A poster campaign launched about 10 days ago sponsored by the ARF called for people to never forget the Sumgait pogroms and to remember that the Armenian presence in Jugha, Nakhichevan is being erased, with the destruction of apparently more than 1,000 stone crosses placed as tombstones in historic Armenian cemeteries there.

Nevertheless, the students that I accompanied to the Genocide Memorial were very obviously there of their own accord, and even if their number was quite small at about 200, it’s more youth than anyone else can muster in Armenia. Civil Society can barely attract more than 20 young people for any event, and the opposition can just about manage 50-70 if they put their minds to it.

Unfortunately, it appears that only national struggles such as the Genocide and Karabakh, rather than pressing issues inside the Republic, can attract what few youth have become politically active. Garo also raises this point.

Sponsoring anti-Turk protests does nothing to help combat issues regarding increasing homelessness, low pensions, absurdly low minimum wages, and mass unemployment, let alone cracking down on government-wide corruption in Armenia. Instead of holding demonstrations to rally the masses to tackle these issues under the leadership of the leading political parties, the choice is to convey messages of hatred towards Armenia’s neighbors. It doesn’t make sense—nevertheless yet another example of Armenian logic.

Still, the youth I walked with didn’t shout anti-Turkish slogans, preferring instead to shout “Hayastan” (Armenia) at any given occasion. I’d also say that remembering national tragedies is of course important, but not at the expense of protesting environmental destruction, human rights violations, falsified elections and corruption. In fact, Armenia needs both, but the level of apathy in Armenian society has also affected the ability of almost anyone to gather huge crowds.

Interestingly, these days of mourning — where one side demonizes the other — have become commonplace in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, something Tom de Waal picked up on in an article written for the Institute of War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) in May 2003. History is also being rewritten.

In Azerbaijan, the terrible pogroms that led to the deaths of 32 people in the town of Sumgait in February 1988 were the first mass violence of the dispute. Azerbaijanis now routinely portray them as having been a “provocation” organised by the KGB in Moscow, or even by underground Armenians.

Yet detailed research showed that none of the supposed evidence for this stands up: the responsibility goes squarely back to the then authorities in Azerbaijan and the Sumgait rioters themselves.

[…]

The omens are not good. On each side, a whole generation of schoolchildren is growing up completely isolated from the other, and reading textbooks that present a nationalistic and distorted version of the tragic history of the Karabakh conflict.

Regardless, although I did not attend the event in Republic Square, the march to Tsitsernakaberd seemed innocent enough and largely keeping in spirit with the idea of a solemn commemoration rather than hijacking a tragic event to push a nationalist agenda. I’m sure there will be further coverage of today’s event later on in the day, and when there is I’ll post the URLs in the comments section of this page.

Until then, A1 Plus has a news item in Armenian accompanied by a photograph from Republic Square here.

Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

More pics are online at Flickr.