“Thirty-two years ago, when the Artsakh movement began in February of 1988, I was standing in the last rows, a simple young deacon, the current spiritual leader of the army, Bishop Vrtanes, was also with me, and he was also a deacon. We both watched and prayed that the events would unfold in the way we had imagined,” Archbishop Mikayel Ajapahyan, the Primate of the Shirak Diocese, said at a rally in Freedom Square.
The gathering began with a minute of silence in honor of those who died during the war. Participants also prayed the Lord’s Prayer.
“I never could have imagined that I would be standing here 32 years later with a sad heart, a broken back, and as someone who lost so much from everything we gained over the years,” the priest continued.
He said that Archbishop Garegin Hovsepyan, who became the Catholicos of Cilicia, considered the fall of Kars to be the worst day of his life. According to the priest, he and many other people likely consider the night of November 9-10, 2020 to be the worst day of their lives. “Those who do not understand would not say so. Their god is their stomach, and they only live to be full. They would not understand. Those who know what it means to lose their homeland would understand. My wish is for the person responsible for the destruction of our homeland’s integrity to leave, and for us to have the opportunity to straighten our backs. We should not only be mourning today. We have been mourning for the past 84 days. We have mourned for every fallen soldier and every inch of land lost. The enemy has reached the borders of Syunik. They have reached the borders by foot, and are counting it inch-by-inch. We’re being told that not a single millimeter will be given away. Has anything even remained for us to give away?”
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The archbishop said that he has no desire to get involved in politics, but he also does not have the opportunity to adapt to the loss of his homeland. “I lost the meaning of my life, what gave meaning to all the years of my life, my pride, my happiness, and the road I traveled on. If God does not give me the hope to live for my homeland, then I do not see any reason to live. I am surprised and angry to know that there are Armenians who say that we should have given the land away sooner so we could be done with this. I doubt that these people are Armenians.”
According to Archbishop Mikayel Ajapahyan, the person responsible for all of this needs to leave and hand over the arena to someone else, to new people who are patriotic and not involved in any illegal activities or injustice, and who are willing to make sacrifices to bring back every inch of land.
“For every day that the incumbent Prime Minister stays in power, we are dragged even deeper and deeper into a hole, which will make it even more difficult for the next person to get us out of the hole. Every day, we become more immersed in the swamp and dirt. That is why he needs to leave as soon as possible. That is why we need a united Armenian will. Our homeland cannot be confined to the internationally defined borders that the incumbent Prime Minister was arguing about. Our homeland is much more than that. In order to avoid having the deaths of our martyrs be for nothing, we must continue to look for ways to stand straight again and to build a new Armenia through our joint efforts,” the archbishop said.
Nelly Grigoryan
