[ad_1]
Greater than 100 folks gathered exterior the Azerbaijani Consulate in Los Angeles on Saturday demanding an finish to assaults by Azerbaijan forces in a disputed border area with Armenia and Artsakh, the place an estimated 200 folks had been killed previously week.
The demonstration coincided with a shock weekend go to to Armenia by Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and two Armenian American members of Congress, and the introduction of a decision in Congress by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) demanding a prohibition on U.S. help to Azerbaijan.
The U.S. Embassy stated the go to will embody a gathering with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, based on the Related Press.
Like many others waving Armenian flags on the occasion organized by the Armenian Youth Federation, Tenny Alahverdian, 20, stated she discovered herself considering of family members “struggling on the entrance strains.”
“We’re hoping that the USA comes down exhausting on Azerbaijan,” she stated. “For President Biden to be calling for peace whereas funding Azerbaijan’s army is a loopy — and lethal — double normal.”
The demonstration was a part of an effort that has spanned a long time of advocacy and activism by Armenians around the globe. A lot of that motion has been centered in Los Angeles County, residence to America’s largest Armenian diaspora neighborhood.
The motion was launched within the Nineteen Eighties, when youngsters of survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918 established themselves within the U.S. The genocide claimed the lives of greater than 1 million Armenians beneath the Ottoman Empire, which turned the fashionable republic of Turkey.
Through the years, Armenian People grew extra politically lively, contributing to political campaigns and the profitable push final yr to have Biden formally acknowledge the genocide.
Bitter reminiscences of the bloodbath have profoundly formed Armenian and Armenian American identification. However U.S. presidents had averted utilizing the time period “genocide” in order to not anger the Turkish authorities, an necessary ally that disputes that what passed off constituted genocide.
Each Armenia and Azerbaijan blame one another for instigating the latest bloody clashes.
However demonstrators exterior the Wilshire Boulevard consulate on Saturday say the preventing began in 2020 when Azerbaijan, with the assistance of Turkey, launched a battle to take away Armenians residing within the disputed border area of Nagorno-Karabakh, known as the Republic of Artsakh.
Information of Pelosi’s go to to Armenia, mixed with Schiff’s proposed decision, prompted Raffi Haig Hamparian, chairman of the Armenian Nationwide Committee of America, to induce Congress to “cease delivery U.S. tax {dollars} to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.”
“A halt to U.S. assist to Azerbaijan,” he stated, “would additionally meaningfully problem our State Division’s deeply flawed coverage of answering each act of Azerbaijani aggression with generic calls upon all events to chorus from violence.”
The Azerbaijani Consulate, nonetheless, stated in an announcement on its web site that the continuing tensions “arose because of large-scale provocations by Armenia, and due to this fact the duty utterly falls on … Armenia.”
Alahverdian, the Los Angeles protest attendee, stated: “The state of affairs isn’t wanting good anyway you have a look at it. It’s troublesome being a member of the diaspora.”
[ad_2]
Source link
