“The Dashnaks have always supported the idea of repatriation,” the coordinator of the ARF Supreme Council of Armenia’s Repatriates’ Assistance Office, Jirayr Bojekyan, said, adding, “Repatriation as a program can only be a state program.”
According to him, there is no organization that is capable of moving people from the Diaspora to Armenia because that responsibility belongs to the state. “But unfortunately, there has not been any repatriation system in Armenia after independence. There have been small projects and somewhat superficial decisions. There was a ministry that became part of a different industry, and now it is a commissioner’s office. These are all superficial actions. There is no vision of what repatriation truly is.”
Jirayr Bojekyan believes that people in Armenia have vague perceptions that there are communities in the Diaspora from which some people come to Armenia. “That is not true. Armenia is in the kind of situation where we need to make repatriation into a state project with concrete programs and serious and understandable laws. But we have not been able to do this, not even now.”
Ami Chichakyan
