Now or never

2.5 years after the beginning of the brutal persecution of Ruben Vardanyan and other Armenian hostages, right up to the expected ‘verdict’ of the Azerbaijani sham trial and farce of a court, we finally heard from Ruben and his family what many residents of cosy apartments and mansions from Yerevan and Moscow to Nice, Los Angeles and Melbourne still do not dare to speak out loud.

The ‘defendant’ refused to accept the charges from the torturers and to expect a fair trial from them. In his family’s statement it is clearly indicated that Ruben Vardanyan will not lodge an appeal and further legitimise the Azerbaijani farce with his participation.

That would have been the only right approach from the very beginning. Armenian Republic has repeatedly called on Ruben, his family and all sympathisers to abandon the position of beggars expecting ‘goodwill’ from mini-Sultan Aliyev.

Ruben and his family realised that it was impossible to defend their rights inside a hostile system. We really hope that everything that was said was sincere, and the first step – the correct diagnosis of the problem – will indeed be followed by a genuine struggle with the right strategy and clear priorities.

It is necessary to continue being consistent and accept that the ‘process’ that they no longer recognise is not legal, but political. Accordingly, the fight against it must be political. Therefore, it will not be possible to dodge the raindrops and ‘stay out of politics’. Ruben Vardanyan is one of the most illustrative examples of how one’s refusal to act politically results in politics catching up with them.

This applies to all Armenians who hope to change the situation inside Armenia in the way Ruben Vardanyan tried to do in Azerbaijan until being sentenced to a 20-year jail term: hiring lawyers, testifying, and calling for a fair trial. The 30-year-old feudal clan system in Armenia is working against Armenian interests – whether it is the future of Armenians in Yerevan, in Baku prison, Glendale or Vienna. We are wasting precious time shaking hands with its representatives and participating in their sham ‘elections’, ‘trials’, ‘peace agenda’, ‘logistical routes’, etc.

If we continue to play by the rules of the Turkish collaborationists both in power and in sham ‘opposition’, trying to find a way to come to an agreement with them and convince them that the Republic of Armenia must protect Armenians and the Armenianness, then all of us, just like Ruben Vardanyan, will be left with the only verdict: the final dismantling of the Armenian statehood, the closure of the Armenian question, the integration of Armenians into the Turkish world. Then it will be too late to ‘not recognise’ the verdict.

It is fair to say that together with Ruben and 22 other Armenians, the Armenian world, its statehood and the national liberation movement were ‘sentenced’ in Azerbaijan. Therefore, the release of Armenian prisoners is one of Armenian Republic’s key priorities, and we have been battling on internal and external fronts. We have a clear strategy for their release, and we remain open to those who are willing to join. The fact that those for whom the battle is pursued for are finally taking part cannot but inspire cautious optimism.