khosq.com

“For the first time in my life I did not say I am Karabakhtsi [Karabakh
Armenian]. They asked me where I am from, I told from Abovyan,”
ArmeniaNow photographer Anahit Hayrapetyan tells about how every
photographer and journalist in the neighborhood of the Myaskinyan
monument on March 1 was asked about their descent in a fierce search
for Karabakhtsis.

Disinformation was spread that the troops that dispersed the sitting strike in the Liberty Square spoke the Karabakh dialect.
But it was not an occasional matter: it was the expression of
xenophobia generated by LTP’s movement, whose number one enemy turned
to be the Karabakhtsis.

The next day, March 2 a taxi driver crossing the damaged Mashtots
avenue was showing me the shops explaining which belongs to whom,
trying to justify the looting: ‘this is Lfik’s, this one belongs to a
Karabakhtsi.’ Lfik is oligarch Samvel Alexanyan who is from Aparan
[town in the North-West to Yerevan]. But what do the Karabakhtsis have
to do with this? The driver continued – the Karabakhtsis have to be
driven out.

On March 2 morning near the site of the fighting a man surveying the
rubble saw soldiers on guard and said to no one in particular, but in
their direction: “Karabakhi dogs”.
This is not a single case as it has become a common point of view during the last commotion.

The negative attitude toward the Karabakh Armenians appeared when the
politicians from Karabakh who were brought by Ter-Petrosyan to solidify
his power against the oppositional forces, overtook it and began using
the fruits of the clan system Ter-Petrosyan had created. If the system
is based on clans people protest against the clan in power. In former
times the target of protests was the All-Armenian Movement and its
leader, then those who forced Ter-Petrosyan’s resignation. The system
remains the same; if tomorrow the Akhakalaktsi Armenians [Akhalkalak is
the provincial center of the Javakhq region in Georgia, populated
predominantly with Armenians] overtake the power they will get the use
of it.

LTP turned the negative attitude toward the Karabakh Armenians into
hatred, declaring the authorities Tatar-Mongols and saying: “Because of
these two, 15,000 people have moved from Karabakh to Armenia, mainly
Yerevan, within the last ten years. Each of them has been given a
position. It did not suffice, and now it’s the sphere of business given
to them (it’s unclear who has checked the figures).”
Enmity was the main weapon of the leader for five months, when he
stated the only mistake of the years of his rule was bringing the two
politicians from Karabakh, the only thing he apologized for (he even
defended the clan system he created by saying the 1995 Constitution was
better than the amendments adopted in 2005); he declared all the
deficiencies in Armenia originated in 1998, he refuted there were
election frauds and state robbery before that, presenting the years of
his rule as ideal times. For a protesting crowd the words of the
charismatic leader were unquestionable and undisputed truth.

Explaining the problems of the state with persons alone and blaming
those persons in deadly sins (perpetrating the October 27
assassinations to cede Meghri), he inspired faith in the mass. They
believed ‘go till the end’, and also made keeping power a matter of
personal security for Sargsyan and Kocharyan.

LTP and his supporters increased the number of their voters by growing
the hostile rhetoric of the campaign. LTP stated Serzh and Robert have
served the Turks with servility for a long time. On the other side he
called traitors and scum all those who did not join him and instead of
opening cracks among the authorities, as he said, created deep breach
of enmity in the society: if the leader calls somebody a traitor the
mass is ready to destroy. (In the newspaper “168 Hours” singer Shushan
Petrosyan told with horror she received letters that called her a
traitor for supporting Serzh Sargsyan and threatened to kill her
children; she said she did not take her son to school for two weeks
because in fear of the threats. And the post-election demonstrations
that passed by Vazgen Manukyan’s office scanned ‘Vazgen – a traitor!’,
because their leader had stated so.)

However, a primary target remained the Karabakis, in a way that drew
comparison ethnic fascism in the 20s-30s in Weimar Germany, where
corruption, oligarchy, depreciation, monopolization of economy were
blamed on the Jews. (The Constitution adopted in the Weimar Republic in
1919 resembled much the 1995 Constitution adopted in Armenia, where the
strong centralized presidential system did not allow for society’s
participation in decision-making and facilitated to the oligarchy and
the monopolized economy that brought the Nazis to power as a solution
to the crisis).

The anti-Karabakhi prejudice reached its climax during the post-voting
rallies in February, when a professor in Opera Square [the Liberty
Square, the Theater Square] underlining their Karabakhi descent
publicized the names of those rectors of universities who have to be
punished amid the ardent shouts of the mass. And another speaker
stated: “The Armenians in this square are thrice more in number that
the Karabakh citizens. Long live the Armenians!”
Armenians of non-Karabakhi descent began writing in blogs as a means of
protest calling themselves Karabakhis as Turks called themselves
Armenians after Dink’s assassination.

The 5 month-long political trainings resulted on March 1 taking the
form of the Molotov cocktails and metal bars. The mass attacked the
police shouting: ‘Turks, Karabakhis go away!’ They say the spirit of
the Armenian people was broken that day; but if something was broken
then maybe that was the spirit of xenophobia.

Unlike Germany, where xenophobia was targeted against an external
element, the ‘other’ for Levon is his native – xenophobia aimed against
part of a mono-ethnic nation. Just like nationalism searches for
enemies for crises among other ethnicities, similarly the ‘pragmatists’
radically denying national projects, search for an enemy to blame the
crisis on, inside the nation. A poet woman, renowned intellectual
inspired by the hatred of hundreds of thousands says Karabakhis are
unable to run a state (LTP openly hinted on giving back Karabakh
stating Karabakh is not a Kosovo and is unable to reach independence;
he told in an interview Armenia has to restitute the damage caused to
Azerbaijan). Thus, LTP supporters appearing in the name of liberalism
became enemies of self-determination simply because those
self-determined belong to their own ethnic group and because helping
them ‘makes the country’s conditions hard.’

Unlike in Germany, where the one who created a non-democratic system
and the one who appropriated it were different people, LTP was both the
creator of the system and the betrayer of those who get use of it; that
is, he is two in one, he wants to oust a clan to replace it with
another, but never change the system he has authored.

Those who want to take the power are in the list of detained, 80
percent of them belong either to the All-Armenian Movement or are
former officials from Republic party. And a wanted businessman Khachik
Sukiasyan used to be the favorite oligarch in times of Levon’s rule,
who, despite not being deprived of his incomes, had partially ceded his
position to Gagik Tsarukyan. Many of the detained and other supporters
of Levon have accumulated millions while in power and have not been
punished, because they were replaced by people who equally get use of
the system.

LTP was a version of the acting authorities ambushed behind the status
of opposition, who having stated he is a tool to change the power
turned the mob filled with hatred into a tool to provide the comeback
of the old clans to power. Having cited the ‘Let there be no other
sacrifice but me’, he sacrificed others, safe in his castle himself,
with the coming threat hanging in the air ordered the demonstrators to
stay and called for arms and resistance through his comrade-in-arms
Pashinyan to hang another deadly sin to the authorities – shooting on
people.

The system in ambush manifested itself not in words, but in deeds as it
distributed bribes to voters and commissions and resorted to violence
on election day equally with the authorities (a week ago head of LTP’s
Ani headquarters was sentenced to 7 years in prison for beating Serzh’s
representative). And LTP who declared himself a president elect in the
first run even before the ballot boxes were opened, revealed the fight
to follow would not be for justice, confusing the growing mass.

Experiencing the barbarism in history is not the most secure way to
understand it, but is more efficient than the history textbooks, when
you understand how the image of the enemy is created because of crises
and injustice.

The times of slaughtering one’s own people have passed, but the
possibility of persecutions and losses still remains and it is
predictable, LTP would begin a hunt for ‘traitors’ and thousands of
Karabakis would become deprived of homeland and would wonder to the
country that would not accept them with pleasure if the region is
returned.

And the danger remains: two days ago a neighbor to an acquaintance of
mine refused to allow a nurse to give her an injection because the
nurse appeared to be of Karabakh descent.
As long as Armenia of the 1995 Constitution (as the Weimar one) has not
been reformed, as long as the clan, corrupt and oligarchic system
persists, the energy of hatred and zeal to destroy the ‘enemy’ still
threatens the country and the threat of war with Azerbaijan grows in
parallel.