ZHIRAYR SEFILIAN: "I FEEL THE RESPONSIBILITY THAT WE’LL TAKE UPON OURSELVES," "SPEAKING THAT WE’LL SOLVE THE ISSUE WITH ARMS, THEY CONSIDER IT MEANINGLESS"

Noyan Tapan
Dec 19 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. The first gathering of the
"Armenian Volunteers’ Unity" organization was followed by the
arrests of organization coordinator Zhirayr Sefilian and member of
the gathering Vardan Malkhasian.

According to the information submitted to Noyan Tapan by the
organizations, Zh.Sefilian’s and V.Malkhasian’s speeches at the
mentioned gathering are put in the basis of the criminal action brought
against them. Complete shorthands of the recording of those speeches
are presented below. Vardan Malkhasian’s speech: "Today you embellished
everything with song, after the example of Khoren Palian, I’ll start
my speech with recitation: In mortiferous darkness of those sad days,
In that black dungeon of blooded feast, The one is betrayer who keeps
silence still The one is traitor who does not draw the sword. And,
really, an Armenian, seeing this reality, seeing the country’s state,
must come to the conclusion that the power is given in the country to
enemies. Conclusions of all ranks bring to the conclusion that they
are masked closed enemies. Those who have quieted the Armenian people,
who has thrown about the Armenian people, who lead Armenian-Turkish
negotiations that the border is already opened, who, therefore,
trade with enemies in lands liberated at the price of life and
blood, life and blood of thousands of freedom-fighters, those are
inner enemies. Some people even compare them with "criminal." If
they are criminals it would be easy: they are dregs of the criminal
world and inner enemies, to become free of them as soon as possible
is the issue of the Armenian people’s salvation. When the goal is
honest, the goal is clean, the goal is patriotic, then one must not
make distinctions among means, as soon as possible, with arms, armed
struggle, revolt, everything, we must leave no stone unturned to become
free of these masked Turks that only the surname is Armenia. <…>
That sale of the fatherland which Serzh and Kocharian implement,
therefore, we have spoken so much, speaking in Christopher’s words,
"we spoke so much that forgot acting," now we must stop speaking,
we must concretely, clearly have some business with the murderous
groups, criminal, murderous skinheads, therefore, with dregs of the
criminal world. One must struggle with them like themselves, blood,
fire on the enemy, in all ways, with all means. It is enough that
we’ll already speak, comment in 6-8 ways, therefore, let’s listen to
the experts. Short, direct: the country is conquered by the enemies,
the enemy is not at the front, but inside, we must liberate. In
all ways." Zhirayr Sefilian’s speech "During the recent years, we,
in general, have made statements, mainly mentioning, emphasizing the
movement round the liberated territories. But as we have noticed, we
have already come out of that narrow circle with the call of statement
and we have a notion to be engaged in all our national problems
in all senses. During those years many people come to us and ask:
"Boys, do they really want to return the lands?" I want to answer
that question now and after it, let’s not speak about it. I, there
was a cause, stated in press and now I again repeat: we’ll break,
crash the one’s hand who dare to cede land, and this, you believe,
there are many people in our country, who will do it. Let’s move
forward. We do not speak any more about the liberated territories. As
our friend Aghayan emphasized that saying "an Armenian volunteer"
we do not understand a war participant <…>, we, unfortunately, do
not need today the most part of the war participants as well. <…>
That’s, qualitative characteristic features of the war participants
will not satisfy us today for we are able to win this war, we today
face a more serious, difficult problem, that’s why, our quality must
be much higher than it was 14 years ago.

Therefore, we must lay stress on our being organized. Here ideas
were periodically expressed during the speeches that "What one must
do, it is enough. Let’s not make distinction among means." I agree,
certainly, let’s not make, but let’s organize first of all. The reason
for those 14 days that our country is in this state is the one that
there is no organized force which, in essence, is led by national
ideas, national values. There is no such a force, there is no such an
organized force. There are such individuals, our task is to find those
people, to unite and immediately organize. We do not imagine being
organized without discipline. We need our conscientious discipline
what we had in the year of 90, the year of 88, the year of 92, when
voluntary standing in a row, nobody imposed us to stand in a row. <…>
Today we must again reach that same emotional state. Everybody must
come to the one that we stand in a row.

If we do not reach that emotional state, nothing will go forward. <…>
we must take a step, do something to build the common house. If this
consciousness does not prevail, we shall not go forward. One of the
important circumstances of our unity is that we want to find people
who are not sold. Are there such people in our country? I ask you,
are there? ("Yes, yes," in the hall). Is there a man not sold for
millions? ("Yes, thank God, there are," in the hall). Let’s find
those people. Imagine, there is nothing more powerful in this world
than an ideological man. A hundred of ideological men will remove
mountains. I am sure that there are such people in Armenia, they are
not in the political field, mainly exclusions can be in the political
field, but they are, in general, at homes, quietly, do not utter a
sound. Disappointed, they are engaged in their own emotions, both
bodily and spiritually. Let’s find those people. Our goal, the goal
of this unity is to find and find out those people, and, of course,
immediately, to organize. I again emphasize, until we are organized,
no work will be moved forward. By repeating "Kocharian, Serzh, move
away," they will not move away, those people will not move away with
peaceful demonstrations, I assure you, they will not move away by
the outer pressure.

If we are organized and are able to create a serious qualitative force,
they will move away. ("Isn’t it late?" from the hall). It is never late
till the time that we were …, it is not late, still we have many
programs in the sense of our national ideals, and I am an optimist
in this sense. The Artsakh liberating struggle is the evidence that
we finally were able to rotate the wheel of history in the opposite
direction, being for the first time during 2000 years, and we must
continue rotating that wheel in that direction. Of course, we did not
make a war to see today’s state, did not make a war for today’s this
immoral, this ugly, perverted state, for state of enslaving, quieting
down our people. It is a pain for us, but what must I say? Maybe,
it was to get so worse that we come to see reason. Maybe. Many
of my friends emphasized that "let’s not accuse the authorities,"
I completely share their opinion.

Robiks, Serzhiks, they are not guilty, they are simply representatives
of the dregs of our nation and just themselves "behave themselves as
dregs." There is nothing here to be surprised, and there is nothing
to accuse. We must accuse ourselves, where are we? Why are not we
organized? All of us, everybody is a separate general. This is one
of our Armenian diseases. <…> You are a general, but come and say
that I have come to be a soldier at the moment. If we are able to
re-find this consciousness in ourselves, our work will advance. <…>
Our uniting has mainly two so called problems: one is long-range, the
other is short-term. I would qualify the long-range one as a strategy,
the short-term one as tactics. The long-range one is: we are finally
able to create an ideological army in out country, an ideological
political union in which national-ideological values, national values,
Christian ones, why not, also the spiritual values, that we inherited
from our grandfathers, will rule. <…> We moved aside, that is why we
are in this state. We acquire our today’s depression, today’s slavery
of our people. Let’s correct ourselves. Therefore, the prosperous
problem of this uniting is finally to start a national ideological
movement, and to present a claim with that political unit and to
gradually start solving all our problems. But this may be for some
years, till we complete it. Until it is completed, we must not wait
for qualitative changes, but we have one important problem, which
is to become free of those authorities, that’s we must be as much
organized during those few months, that we are able not to allow
those people’s reproduction, as if they are reproduced, we shall
have serious difficulty to implement our long-lasting affair. Those
monsters will be much more dangerous after being reproduced. It is
very important that we are organized during those few months. By
our being organized, we, why not, will organize at some extent the
opposition as well. Let’s be it so, that this time the opposition’s
tactics struggles, reaches result at some extent.

Why not, let’s imagine, that the more we are organized the better
we can make the opposition understand our speech, the beginning
with words, if it is necessary, also with frightening, imposing,
why not. It depends on us, I can do nothing alone, we can do nothing
with 50 people, many of us must be for we are able to impose our word
on the opposition as well. We today needs to more say and explain to
the opposition but not to the authorities. It is meaningless to give
qualifications about the authorities, I do not even want to be deep in
the awful state existing in our country today. I consider meaningless
to separately list the spheres, as everybody knows it, everybody is
of the same opinion. I may clarify one thing in this sense that the
Armenian, for the first time in his country, on his land, I am not
a historian, I do not know if it happened that the Armenian is for
the first time fused on its land. Today many of our young people are
fused in Yerevan, they grow up as so called Armenians, but are not
Armenians with their essence. I think that our patience already gave
way. I again want to touch upon calls of our friends of the movement:
"Don’t spare means, to make distinction among means." I am of the
same opinion, but first, let’s be organized. Speaking that we must
solve the issue with arms, I consider it meaningless. Let’s not speak
today in what way we must be able our country, those people, to start,
remove, only then solve serious problems. I want we never think of
the ways during the coming months, we do not discuss and dispute
with each other, let’s only be organized. It is meaningless to talk
without being organized. We talk about it already for ten years and
today we see a new group in the political field every day. Please,
they express good words: "we’ll sweep, clean the field." How, go
and clean once, we’ll see, how will you clean Robert Kocharian,
in what way will you clean? Who do you cheat, that’s, what, we’ll
again take the people to the Baghramian street and they will again
beat the people and we shall not be able to protect.

This is simply absurdity. I do not want to criticize anybody. But
I want that we, all of us gathered here, understand each other in
this issue that until we are not organized, until some thousands of
people do not learn to stand and sit like a man, nothing will be,
we’ll be able to do nothing. And as for our confidence towards me,
for which I am grateful to all you that you are present here today,
I assure you that I feel the responsibility, that burden that we shall
take on ourselves, and I feel my responsibility, and we’ll certainly
put right our this uniting. It may happen that we are poor when walking
but we’ll certainly put right. And I am sure that the God is with us."