The ban on Armenian territory that struck Mourad Papazian on July 13 at Zvartnots airport is serious but not surprising. It has been brewing since at least July 2021, when the High Commissioner for the Diaspora signed with an Armenian association in France, almost unknown to the battalion, a cooperation agreement pretentiously called “global and reinforced” which notably gave it the exorbitant power to represent the government of Armenia to the French authorities. An incongruous initiative, obviously aimed at weakening the position of the CCAF, a unitary group recognized as the interlocutor of the Armenian associative world by the Republic, from the Elysée to all local and territorial communities. An unprecedented step forward for French people of Armenian origin.
A year later, after a whole series of provocations, the disgraceful treatment inflicted on this early Armenian militant ratifies in the most brutal way the rupture between the administration headed in Yerevan by Zahré Sinanyan and the most important federation of diaspora organizations. Because make no mistake about it: even before his membership of the FRA world office, it was the quality of co-chairman of the CCAF of the CEO of Media School that was targeted. How else to explain that parallel to this event, the world president of Dachnaktsoutioun, the Canadian Hagop der Khatchadourian, went about his business in Armenia without any problem? And that, never, no leader of his party has been prevented from entering the country under the mandate of Pashinyan, who moreover seems to be very well put up with the posturing of this opposition as noisy as it is inoffensive for his popularity ?
The false pretext invoked by the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday, July 22 (the role of Mourad Papazian in organizing the “attack on the convoy of the government delegation led by the Prime Minister in front of the Armenian Embassy in France on June 1 of last year”), does not hold. And this for at least three reasons. First of all, this “attack”, as pitiful as it is politically, is neither a crime nor an offence. As part of the panoply of more or less tolerated acts of protest that do not affect the physical integrity of people, this demonstration did not generate any prosecution on the French side, nor any official protest from the Armenian government. Then, Mourad Papazian has traveled to Armenia several times since this affair, without this posing the slightest difficulty. Finally, nothing proves his involvement in this agit-prop enterprise, and even less in its excesses, for which he cannot be held responsible not having been on the spot, not having participated in these acts, nor did they having bonded. Moreover, is it not exaggerated to say the least to qualify a year later insults (unacceptable) and the throwing of eggs and tomatoes (violent) on the car of the Prime Minister, of terrorism? A little more moderation would have been welcome, especially on the part of politicians who took power from the streets, even though they were later democratically legitimized.
No one is of course fooled by these “explanations” supposed to justify an attack on Armenian democracy and a brutal blow to the Franco-Armenian associative world. On the other hand, it is clear that this discriminatory decision constitutes the authoritarian culmination of a rise in tension between the High Commissioner for the Diaspora, who would, it seems, have the ear of the Prime Minister – alas! -, and the CCAF. Having shown himself to be as absent as he is incompetent since taking office, Mr. Zareh Sinanyan obviously does not forgive this unitary structure for the successes that owe it nothing, and which, even worse, highlight its own shortcomings. Ah! How sweet it would have been to see him bring, even once, a small reinforcement – however symbolic it might have been – to the community’s fights against Holocaust denial! Or to hear him encourage and congratulate this federation of associations for the points scored in favor of the common cause! But not only did this High Commissioner who passed through Glendale sovereignly ignore France until he signed this famous “convention” with a group of opportunistic courtiers daring to present themselves as an alternative to the CCAF, but he has not stopped since to persist in its work of destruction and destabilization of the Armenians of France, undoubtedly so as not to have to change its mind.
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Persisting in error, this senior official has been multiplying twisted tricks and lies for a year, encouraging conflict where everything worked more or less, or in any case immeasurably better than elsewhere in the Armenian world. In addition to his support for the enemies of the union, should we remember his perjury, when having pretended to join the CCAF so that it organizes its tour in France in February 2022, he had at the same time supported a handful of opponents at the CCAF, always the same, by participating in a meeting that did not bring together… 50 people at the 15th century town hall in Paris?
Do we have to remember his bursts of megalomaniacal fevers, when he asked the CCAF to promote interviews of his person in the French television news, doubtless believing himself to be at the center of media attention in France or in the bled with a state TV under orders? Should we go back on his ridiculous proposal to appoint “referents” like “political commissioners” in each community, thereby betraying his thirst for power? We would never stop telling his whims, his lies by omission and his untruths with regard to the CCAF, like this day of July 19, 2022 on the Armenian antenna “24News”, when, chaining skids, he presented it as a lambda structure, taking care to avoid mentioning that it is a federation bringing together almost a hundred associations, the most important of which? Recently, let us remember, he dared to claim, with a nerve worthy of the Stalinist era, that the CCAF was an obstacle to relations between the Armenian and French rulers (whereas it is exactly the opposite), while emphasizing that co-chaired by two cousins, as if this family bond should be stricken with indignity? Thus, the author of these lines, was he not less a “cousin” of Mourad Papazian, all the times he was received and congratulated by Nikol Pashinyan, in France or in Armenia? Finally, still in the same line, how can we ignore his visit at the end of June in the south of France, to a small group of Armenians whom some call the “Nice” or the “Turks”, because of their frequentation claimed by senior leaders of the genocidal state? A fine team, which one finds as if by chance at the maneuver in the last enterprises of division of the community (organization of dissidence in the apostolic Church, attempt to take control of the college of Sèvres to transform it into a project real estate, participation in the opposition of the CCAF, just after the 44-day war, perhaps to punish him for having rallied so many supporters to the cause of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the Senate and the National Assembly, a phenomenon unique to the world ?
The unfortunate thing is that one cannot be as frivolous as it is irresponsible with the diaspora without harming the interests of Armenia. May this High Commissioner be of no use, be it! But for him to turn out to be so evil is dangerous. And this applies to Armenia’s influence as well as to the image of the head of government.
Should Nikol Pashinyan be thrown out with the dirty water of the High Commission? This is a step that we will be careful not to take, as the task of the leader of the Velvet Revolution, to whom Armenian society owes so much in so many areas, is similar in the current context to the labors of Hercules.
All the more reason for him to draw conclusions from the activity of this deputy minister who, instead of helping him out, exacerbates tensions rather than easing them, creates conflict when problems should be solved, and who, above all, strives to weaken the strike force and the weight of Armenia in a country as important as France, a member of the Security Council.
It will therefore be understood in these conditions that it is more than urgent to put an end to this sequence which could not be more counterproductive. The editorial in this summer’s issue of the Nouvelles d’Arménie called for “calming things down”. Faced with the escalation which, on the contrary, has been witnessed since, let it be permitted today to call on the authorities of Armenia to take more drastic measures, whistling the end of the game as quickly as possible. And, rather than seeking to kill what we cannot control, to rally the diaspora which constitutes one of Armenia’s main assets in the world, as its action in France has amply demonstrated, for example …
Ara Toranian