MONTREAL – The ongoing clash between Armenia and Azerbaijan is physically and emotionally remote for the maximum number of Canadians, however, for Montrealer Talar Chichmanian, the war is the moment since the 1990s when his circle of relatives has taken up arms.
Her husband left Montreal to join Armenian forces, who since 27 September have been fighting the Azerbaijani army in a war that has claimed many lives. This is your time of war for the same piece of land in the south caucasus. , which ended in 1994, killed his father, brother and uncle.
Members of the Armenian diaspora are known to be fiercely unwavering with their home country, and remain obsessed with the 1915 genocide committed in opposition to their others through the Ottoman Empire, or Turkey’s fashion.
They are concerned that the existing conflict, which they say is fuelled in one component through Turkey, will lead to some other genocide and ask Canada to take a more powerful position on the Armenian people.
“I’m usually proud to call myself Canadian, but last week was a terrible disappointment,” Chichmanian said in a recent interview with Montreal. “I do not desire tears on The Day of Remembrance; I want action today. “
His two sons, over the age of 12 and 9, are “terrified,” he said. “I can’t share many things with them. Their lives are already deranged by the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t need to tighten them anymore. “
Armenian officials say Turkey is sending Syrian weapons and mercenaries to Azerbaijan. Chichmanian said he would like Canada to push Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO.
On October 5, Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Canada had suspended exports of an Ontario-made drone sensor to Turkey while investigating allegations that sensor-equipped drones were being used through ongoing Azeri forces.
Champagne said he had spoken to his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Friday. “My key message to stay out of conflict,” Champagne told reporters.
Nearly 64,000 people who knew themselves as Armenians in the 2016 Canadian census live in the Montreal area. While Armenians have joined Canadian society, Montrealer Taline Zourikian said the network remains united.
“We don’t assimilate,” said Zourikian, a psychiatrist who helped organize a protest in Montreal on Thursday. The 50 or so accumulated people asked the Canadian media to pay more attention to the conflict.
“We are the dead of the survivors of the Armenian genocide,” he said, referring to the blood bath of 1. 5 million Armenians in 1915. Canada officially and condemned the genocide in 2004.
The war-at-war region, called Nagorno-Karabakh, is predominantly Armenian and has been controlled through the Armenian-backed Republic of Artsaj since 1994, but Artsaj’s government is not identified worldwide and the territory is located in Azerbaijan.
Kyle Matthews, executive director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, compares Turkey’s attack on Azerbaijan to Germany’s attack on Israel.
Turkey has committed genocide opposed to a minority and is now attacking that minority, he said. The Turkish government, Matthews added, never identified the Armenian genocide and imprisoned others for raising it.
“The last level of genocide is denial,” Matthews said in a recent interview. “Being so aggressive, there is a fear that Turkey may have hidden motives in this conflict.
“There is now documented evidence that Turkey has transported extremist fighters from Syria to Azerbaijan to combat Armenian forces,” said Matthews, who spent two years in the south caucasus with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The arrival of these fighters is a fear for Lara Aharonian, an Armenian from Montreal who founded the Women’s Resource Center, an NGO operating in Armenia and Shusha, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“This is a direct risk to live in border spaces and conflict zones,” he said in a telephone interview from the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Aharonian and her husband, Raffi Niziblian, have been volunteers in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh since 1999. Her organization is helping women succeed over the traumas of past conflict.
He said he became involved in what would happen to the other 75,000 people who had been displaced by the fighting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is a generation that has experienced displacement for the time being of its life,” Aharonian said.
Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a Russian-mediated ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh from Saturday, but without delay accused others of diverting the deal.
Minutes after the truce came into force, the Armenian army accused Azerbaijan of bombing the domain near kapan city in southeastern Armenia, killing a civilian. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence downplayed Armenian accusations as a “provocation. “
Armenian Canadians say the Canadian government wants to do more before it’s too late.
Sevag Belian, executive director of Canada’s Armenian National Committee, said in a telephone interview that Canada will have to convict Turkey and Azerbaijan.
“Because if we hold the aggressors accountable, they will continue to dedicate their crimes with impunity. “He said.
This Canadian Press report was first published on October 11, 2020.
– With The Associated Press and Mike Blanchfied with The Canadian Press
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This article was produced with money from Facebook Scholarship and Canadian Press.