#artsakh

Pictorial dog Rug, dated 1891, Artsakh, Armenia

It's really thoughtful of you to ask, thank you!

The most important thing one can do is keep talking about Armenia. The media doesn't give any attention to the struggles and suffering of Armenians, so spreading the word, even through conversations with friends and family, can help immensely.

As for donations, here are a few organizations that are worth looking into:

All for Armenia

Artsakh Relocation Project

Children of Armenia Fund (COAF)

Armenian Food Bank

IMAST

It's been two months since more than 100 thousand armenians have been ethnically cleansed from their homeland of Artsakh. This doesn't mean that everything is over and everyone can get back to their daily lives and forget about it. I found some ways to help that I urge you to at least reblog.

DONATE:

Greenhouses and Beekeeping for displaced Artsakhtsis

CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES:

H.R.5683 - Supporting Armenians Against Azerbaijani Aggression Act of 2023

H.R.5686 - Preventing Ethnic Cleansing and Atrocities in Nagorno-Karabakh Act of 2023

[left: Anam is 90 years old. She lived through the Nakba in 1948, and today she was displaced again from the city to the south of the Gaza Strip.]

via ig: belalkh

[right: Amalia born in Martakert, Artsakh in 1920. Older than the borders of her region. She has experienced genocide all her life. She is now a refugee.]

After being starved and imprisoned in blockade for months, 120,000 indigenous Armenians in Artsakh just faced mass deportation and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Azerbaijan, aided by their brother country Turkey and supplied military aid by a third genocidal country, Israel. Noting that in case my American friends think this is a small regional conflict-- guess who funds Israel?

Artsakh will be dissolved on January 1st, 2024 and for the first time in 3,000 years, it will be void of Armenians. Hard to put the pain into words. Turkey and Azerbaijan will not stop here, as pan-turkic doctrine claims all of Armenia as theirs. Armenian existence threatens the fabric of Azeri (and Turkish) national identity so it is no surprise they want to annihlate us again.

With the violent occupation of Artsakh, our ancient holy sites will be desecrated and our history rewritten while major news outlets will find pretty words for genocide like "conflict" or "war". No one will punish Azerbaijan's war crimes, no one will remember white phosphorous rain on our homes. And the perpetrators will continue to live a lie.

I think denial is a fragile basis for any relationship, to a person or to a land. What is built on a foundation of denial will break under enough tension, after enough time. I believe we'll be back someday.

And I have some big feelings, as a part of the diaspora. Remembrance Day is an inappropriate title for a time in which Armenians still face genocidal forces. Just last year, Azerbaijan, armed by Turkey, ethnically cleansed over 280,000 Armenians from Artsakh. The illegal colonizer state of Israel, currently in the midst of their 6+ month-long genocide against the Palestinians, has placed the Armenians who call Jerusalem home under threat and siege.

The Armenian struggle and the Palestinian struggle are deeply linked.

In his rise to power, Hitler is quoted to justify his actions against the Jewish, Roma, Queer, Disabled, and other victims of the Holocaust, to say "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Echoing these chilling words, Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish wrote:

Who Remembers the Armenians? I remember them and I ride the nightmare bus with them each night and my coffee, this morning I'm drinking it with them You, murderer - Who remembers you?

The trauma sustained during a genocide is not limited to the people experiencing it right now. The echoes of that trauma leak forward into the next generations, passed down through survival, and that is so insidious. My grandmother got to live, but did so believing that her parents did not love her, because the trauma they endured prevented them from expressing it. Abuse and unhealthy attachment were passed down because that starving hunger for love and acceptance was passed down. It is so deeply cruel and unfair that our oppressors get to reach through time and hurt our children's children.

We need to band together and stop the present-day abusers, the genocidal monsters that oppress the people of Palestine, Armenia, Congo, and so many others.

We need to uplift art made by those who survived, and by those who are surviving. Art is always targeted by the oppressor to erase cultural identity, to destroy legacy, and to break spirits. Support Palestinian and Armenian poets, and artists, and writers.

Heritage was a loud and gleeful cheerleader of Azerbaijan’s recent total genocide in Artsakh, and their guys openly favor the extermination of all Armenians in the region, because pipelines.