“Our values are human values. When you have compassion, dignity and love then nothing can scare you, nothing can stop you – no one can stop love. Not armies, not hate, not persecution, not famine, nothing.” The author of these words is a wonderful woman born in the African country of Burundi, Aurora Prize winner and humanist Marguerite Barankitse. But, she has abandoned her homeland. April 24 is a symbolic day for her, that day she had to leave Burundi to become a refugee. Here is what she says, “I hope that this award will one day become a return ticket to Burundi for me and I will be able to create a paradise on this land. Now, it is a country where children are killed and mothers are raped. The President has set up a police force who kills all those who do not agree with his third tenure in the elections.” Mrs. Margaret voiced these words during the April 24 unprecedented ceremony in the capital of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan, when she gave an honor and was awarded this international prize. Of course, Armenia is not Burundi, at least with the fact that the President here has not set up a police force that is killing children and raping women just for the fact that people are against his third term, it is rather a reproduction of power by illegal manners. However, this is just the bearish manifestation of the phenomenon but the phenomenon is the same.
Certainly, in Armenia, void of free and fair elections since 1995, this reproduction problem is solved in more “civilized” manners, and until now unpunished “March 1” was an exception with its cruelty rather than a conformity with the law, nevertheless, as we can see, the problem is the same and we should be comforted by the fact that they are not raping but, for example, a popular NA MP can publicly promise with without being punished, or they do not kill the opposition but can make a group and attack an observer during the elections when the results of the “boss” are not very reliable. Or, the police will not rape and will not kill but can pretty well pull-and-push and humiliate a woman in the street and beat the protesters in a patrol wagon and throw down the journalist’s camera on the asphalt and afterward giving “scientific” explanations. During the Aurora awards ceremony, the words uttered from the lips of those true carriers about universal values were very exciting while the stories were instructive and indeed, heroic.
On the other hand, it was a cold shower for both Armenia’s society and the political class, of course, if not universal, at least the simple human perceptions and feelings do not disappear utterly. Mrs. Barankitse has abandoned her homeland because of the threat of genocide. And who has the clear answer why people are abandoning Armenia? How long will this evil emigration continue? Well, as for the human values of which Marguerite Barankitse was talking about, in Armenia we see it in the party programs, laws and other basic documents but we, to say the least, hear “alternative” approaches to these values from the lips of various political figures who are trying to convince us with the faces of kiselyov “sure-convincing” expressions that it is contrary to our, I do not know, “traditional”, “ancestral” or “Armenian manners” moral image. It is needless to remind the terrifying “circus” that our strategic ally “demonstrates” every other day in its legislative body – the State Duma, and the Russian Minister of Culture heralds on an Armenian media that human values are “the outcome of the burning mind of North Atlantic campaign.” And our ally freely offers such “values system” to the public through television … On the one hand, Yerevan becomes a capital that is directly associated with the international award for humanitarian activities and gains an international fame, on the other hand, this fame must yet to be justified, proved and maintained. And given the known facts, there is a big gap here and overcoming it becomes simply a matter of national and state dignity. It also becomes obvious that no matter how motionless and hopeless are the authorities for some people, but at least there exists a clear alternative in the public perception: either human values or a “Eurasian” circus with all its “traditional”, “ancestral” or “Armenian” elements. Mrs. Margaret is dreaming of returning to Burundi and building a paradise on this land, and let God help her. But we have to start from stopping being engaged in self-deception and we definitely can as Churchill said not to allow our country to turn into a hell.
Ruben MEHRABYAN
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