-
Quick Links:
Commentary
End Genocide Now
In His Shoes Represented in San Francisco, Washington, D.C.
by Varoujan Movsesian
“End genocide now! End genocide now!” The chant resonated from 5,000 mouths Sunday afternoon. We stood on Chrissy Field in San Fransisco, just overlooking the Bay. We had just stood in silent vigil on the Golden Gate Bridge, spanning the engineering masterpiece between San Francisco and Marin County. Likewise, we spanned the breadth of the nation, our land of Peace and Freedom, as we were joined by our brethren 30,000 strong in Washington, D.C. along with the countless others nationwide, standing in solidarity with the victims of the current genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. On this April 30, dubbed the Day of Conscience for Darfur, we hoped to span the breadth of the world and reach out to our brothers and sisters so far isolated from ourselves.
But
35,000 seems so little when we think of the 3 million who have suffered as a
result of the violence: a systematic devastation of a culture purely on the
grounds of hatred. One hundred times as many lives have been directly impacted
by this hatred; men, women and children, killed, raped and tortured. Those
children lucky enough to survive as refugees are constantly tormented by the
memories of their parents being brutally hacked to death, brothers and sisters
being torn from each other, sexually molested and killed, all before their very
eyes. For each of us present on either coast, one hundred more
people on the other side of the world are direct victims of this atrocity. We
were nothing.
The trek from the Golden Gate to Chrissy Field seems so insignificant when we think of the death marches through the deserts of Darfur. The heat seems bearable when we think of the mothers who must bury their children who have died of heat exhaustion. The bottles of water and warm reception after our hike seem out of place when we think of the famine, malnutrition, hatred and animosity that greets the refugees as they pour into the neighboring country Chad, threatening to deplete resources and harm the economy. In our land of Peace and Freedom, it is hard to grasp just what is happening. Yet today, as Armenians, we can truly understand what 91 years has not yet taught our people.
There is no justice in genocide.
There is no solidarity in genocide.
Or is there? The individual experiences of genocide may be hard for us to comprehend, but they are by no means foreign. These are the stories that we have grown up with. They are the reason we are no longer in our homeland. They are also the reason we are able to contextualize Darfur. They are the reason we found ourselves in San Francisco. They are the reason one of our Armenian priests was able to speak in Washington, D.C. On both coasts of the United States, we were able to represent the Armenian people in humanity’s ongoing struggle for true freedom.
We did not stand alone. We do not stand alone. We cannot stand alone. In 1915, the world turned its back on us. Today, the only justice that can amount from our past is to stop the Darfur Genocide and to stop it right now. As a nation, as a people, we must stop mourning genocide and simply stop genocide. We have already walked in the shoes of the people of Darfur. We were the victims of genocide. In order to bring actualization to the promise of our ancestors, our tragedy must be transformed into the determination and strength which allows us to stop genocide in Darfur and prevent it from recurring ever again.
In the first genocide of the 21st century, the only genocide which we can stop, we are given the opportunity to take the first step. As Armenians, as Christians, as humans, we have an obligation to take it. We must “End genocide now.”