(Agencia Prensa Armenia).- The municipal space of memory The Hell (El Infierno) in Avellaneda, one of the largest districts of Buenos Aires, Argentina, hosted an event during the afternoon of Wednesday 26 April for the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the 10th anniversary of Law 26,199 for which Argentina formally recognizes the crime against humanity. The event was attended by the Mayor of Avellaneda, Jorge Ferraresi, Pedro Mouratian, consultant expert of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Nicolas Sabuncuyan, director of the Armenian National Committee of Argentina and Claudio Yacoy, Secretary of Human Rights of the Municipality of Avellaneda, who organized the event.
The Hell is the name of a former clandestine center for detention, torture and extermination in Avellaneda during the last Argentine military dictatorship, which is now a space for the transmission of human rights.
“One sometimes believes that things go loose, and in general they have international contexts, these contexts have consequences, those consequences have experiments and those experiments are repeated. If we have no memory, they are repeated in another way and with another modality,” said Jorge Ferraresi. “There are not two sides to the truth, the other one is the lie. Thank you for keeping these stories alive,” he added.
“Memory is the ethical dimension of history,” began Pedro Mouratian, who, referring to the ten years of the Argentine law recognizing the genocide, opined that “Argentina is an example.” “It is an example because it has been made from conviction, not from the interests that could circumstantially have some political party or any group that wanted to show solidarity with the Armenian community.”
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Nicolas Sabuncuyan stressed the importance of the ties between the Armenian Cause and human rights organizations since “we are part of the same struggle.”
“The timeliness of the struggle for human rights and the effectiveness of the fight against negation is as undeniable as it is undeniable that the commitment of some political actors throughout history has been decisive for the advancement of this cause,” he said. Finally, he welcomed the fact that it was the Secretariat of Human Rights itself, with the support of the Intendancy convened to carry out the activity.
Jorge Deldelian from the Armenian Compatrician Union of Marash, Gabriel Sivinian of the Armenian Cultural Union and Carmen “Tota” Guede, member of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, also spoke during the activity with the neighbors of Avellaneda. At the end an artistic exhibition by the Armenian National Committee was inaugurated in The Hell with the works of the plastic artist Gagik “Gago” Isahakyan accompanied by texts from the poetry book “From the Shadows of Pain” by Alfonso Tabakian.