Lebanon’s Armenians: well-integrated but declining
By Nayla Razzouk – BEIRUT

Middle East Online, UK
April 21 2005

Armenians whose ancestors escaped massacre in Ottoman Turkey gain
Lebanon’s respec with their skills, hard work.

Lebanon’s well-integrated Armenian community is gearing up for the
90th anniversary of the massacre of their ancestors in Ottoman Turkey
amid concerns over emigration which has halved their number in 15
years.

The Christian Armenians have been hit by the same economic hardships
as other communities in the tiny Arab country which welcomed their
forefathers with open arms.

>>From 250,000 at the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, during
which tens of thousands emigrated, the Armenian community has
dwindled further to about 120,000, according to political and
religious leaders of the community.

“We suffered emigration like all other communities in post-war
Lebanon. We are trying to face that problem, and so are our churches,
with financial and housing aid,” said MP Jean Ogassabian, one of six
ethnic Armenian deputies in the 128-member parliament.

“But since Armenia’s independence in 1991, many of the funds that we
used to receive are now going” to the former Soviet republic, said
another, MP Serge Tor Sarkissian.

Lebanon hosts the Arab world’s largest Armenian community, the
descendants of survivors of the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians who
are now leading a global campaign to declare the mass killings a
genocide.

The massacres have been acknowledged as genocide by a number of
countries, including France, Canada and Switzerland. Armenians around
the world will mark the 90th anniversary of the start of the
slaughter on April 24.

“A draft law proposal for official Lebanese recognition of the
genocide has been in my drawer for two years because Lebanon does not
need more crises. We are Lebanese first, and we are forever grateful
to Lebanon,” said Tor Sarkissian.

Most of Lebanon’s Armenians hail from the region of Cilicia, today in
Turkey, and not in the present-day state of Armenia.

>>From refugees living under tents on wastelands, the Armenians gained
the respect of other communities in Lebanon with their skills and
hard work that allowed them to gain prominent economic and political
positions.

The community is today represented by a government minister, six MPs
and three main political parties. The mother and wife of President
Emile Lahoud are of Armenian origin.

Many of Lebanon’s top jewellers, leading industrialists, prominent
physicians, popular television presenters, artists and at least half
of the musicians of the national symphony orchestra are Armenians.

If many Lebanese are known to speak Arabic, French and English, some
Lebanese Armenians are even quadrilingual.

At election time, the Armenian vote is an important factor since many
of them are registered in Beirut and important regions nearby. They
have however often been criticised for voting in block, in favor of
the government of the day.

The Armenians maintained a neutral stand during the war.

“The Armenians mind their own business to the point that they even
celebrate Christmas on their own,” on January 6, said Wassim Husseini
in a joke summing up how Armenians are generally viewed.

But such stereotypes belong more to the past, said Arda Ekmekji, dean
of arts and sciences at Haigazian University, the only Armenian
higher learning institute outside Armenia.

“Today, Lebanese Armenians are completely integrated, they live
across the country and speak perfect Arabic,” she said. “When two
Lebanese meet in Paris, they naturally speak Arabic!”

Beside the input of the family, Armenian identity is kept alive by
active political, cultural and sporting institutions as well as some
70 Armenian schools and the university.

And there is the commemoration of April 24.

Near Saint Gregory the Illuminator Armenian church north of Beirut,
children file in groups into a mausoleum to watch in silence a
display of skulls from the massacre.

In the all-Armenian village of Anjar, in eastern Lebanon, residents
live amid apple orchards, vineyards and Islamic ruins in six quarters
named after the six villages of mountainous Musa Dagh, in today’s
Turkey.

Armenians from around the world trek to Anjar to pray at the memorial
of the heroic and poorly-armed Armenian villagers in Musa Dagh who,
faced with almost certain death, fought for 40 days against invading
Turks in 1915.