“Zurna is heard well in a distance,” – so responded architect Levon Igityan to the petition of the Diaspora intellectuals “Justice Within Armenia”. Note that according to the petition, the Diaspora Armenian intellectuals wrote, “In the wake of yearly protests and recent upheavals during the spring and summer of 2016 that resulted in gross violations of human and civic rights, the initiators of the petition say no to the systematic corruption, monopolies, judicial inequality, police brutality, partisan politics, unequal rights, national depopulation, and elections tainted by fraud, all of which have contributed to the ongoing unrest.”
Mr. Igityan told Aravot.am that he does not know the Diaspora Armenian intellectuals who have joined this petition. To our observation that the petition is signed by actress Arsine Khanjyan, producer Atom Egoyan and Serj Tankian, Mr. Igityan continued, “I am not aware of the Armenian intellectuals, I do not know them. You name three people, are they William Saroyan or Arshile Gorky, Rouben Mamoulian? Or, in this staff list, who leaves this world, the vacancies are marked who should hold it. What does this mean, is it a matter of scale?
Intellectuals representing the nations, who are they, those three people? What generalizations are you doing, I do not understand. They do not have this reputation. Does the one who plays good guitar becomes an Armenian intellectual?” The architect said that he would not only join the petition but is also against the crowd struggle, – “If it hurts them, let them come here and live here and struggle with us. I do not believe in loving the homeland in a distance. I do not accept mass opinions. When three hundred people are walking in the street, I stop two of them and say, guys, I want to join you, what is the problem? And they say, we do not know, we are yelling for now. We will not achieve a goal with this psychology.”
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The paragraph in the petition “Justice Within Armenia” saying, “In the wake of yearly protests and recent upheavals during the spring and summer of 2016 that resulted in gross violations of human and civic rights” is incomprehensible for Mr. Igityan, “I do not know what they mean, what human rights are violated. I repeat, I do not accept street occurrences, we are a nation of individuals, the notion of a crowd is for small nations a very dangerous thing. I do not see crowd and street actions in the state-building.”
To our question why the Diaspora and not the Armenia-based intellectuals started the struggle against the monopolies in Armenia, corruption, violation of human rights and other negative occurrences because they do not notice these problems or they do not care about them, Mr. Igityan replied, “Do all discuss here, in the Diaspora, what I am doing in my life? Generally, are they aware of what I am doing, whether I need someone’s assistance or not? Whether I have a clue of what I am doing or not. If every person minds its own business, there will be no need for any protests.”
To our clarifying question of whether this means that in your opinion the intellectuals have no deal with the problems in the country, Mr. Igityan replied, “There are different ways for struggling, I do not accept this kind of struggle. If tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, a patient is brought to the hospital and a council of physicians will be required, so we must leave this council of physicians to go to the street and diagnosis the patient there and tell the doctors how to heal the patient. Under we deal with it, the patient will die. Everything should be dealt by well-informed people, at that time no problem will arise.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
