Armenian diaspora bound by killings

Last Updated: Thursday, 12 October 2006, 13:34 GMT 14:34 UK

By Steven Eke
Regional affairs analyst, BBC News

>From the Armenian perspective, the passing of a law in France
forbidding denial of what Armenians consider to have been genocide is
recognition of a great historical disaster.

There are politically and financially influential Armenian communities
in several countries, most importantly the US, Canada and France. They
have driven efforts to force recognition of the massacres in 1915 as
genocide.

With Armenians so dispersed around the globe, the genocide theme has
evolved into a central aspect of their national and self-identity.

But in Armenia itself, perspectives on the mass killings are sometimes
quite different from the angry and highly politicised debate abroad.

Seminal event

One of the first things foreign visitors to Armenia are taken to see
is the genocide memorial.

The towering concrete structure stands on a hill overlooking the
country’s capital, Yerevan.

It houses a small, sombre museum and is generally a low-key affair –
except on one of Armenia’s public holidays, genocide memorial day,
held in late April every year.

Then a significant part of Armenia’s population – just three-million
or so strong – visit it to lay flowers.

At other times, the killings are part of a shared history, but one
obscured by daily life.

Armenia is very poor, and its people have much more immediate concerns
to be worried about.

That is not so among the Armenian diaspora. Revealingly, most of the
best-known reflections of the killings, in music and literature, were
produced outside Armenia.

In France, and especially the US, Armenians have excelled in science
and commerce, and have a vocal presence in politics and the judiciary.

This leads Turkey and its allies to speak of an "Armenian lobby",
which they say exerts disproportionate influence.

But among the diaspora, the mass killings in 1915 are the seminal
event of modern Armenian history, something that binds together what
is one of the world’s most dispersed peoples.

Indeed, many diaspora Armenians passionately believe that the killings
define latter-day Armenian identity.

And it is the diaspora, rather than Armenia itself, that drives the
effort to have those killings recognised internationally as genocide.