Gulf News, United Arab Emirates
March 8 2007

Key to preserving Armenian ethnicity
By Jumana Al Tamimi, GCC and Middle East Editor

Dubai: When Vera and her three brothers and sisters were very young,
their father longed for his children and Syrian Orthodox wife to
learn how to speak his mother tongue -Armenian.

His wish came true and Vera became actively involved in preserving
the Armenian identity of her ancestors, not just their language.

"My mother started learning Armenian with us, and taught it to us
afterwards," said Vera Yacoubian, the Executive Director of the
Armenian National Committee in the Middle East.

"The Armenian language is essential to keep the identity
[alive]…The foundation is to preserve our traditions and heritage,"
she told Gulf News.

However, "Learning our language doesn’t mean we don’t learn other
languages. Later, we learned Arabic and English," she added.

Protecting their Armenian ethnicity is essential, wherever they
choose to live. "But our loyalty is to the country we come from in
the first place," Yacoubian said.

"We came from the Orient and we don’t want our roots to be extracted
from a region we belong to since the fifth and sixth centuries," she
added. Armenians pride themselves for having the oldest church in
Mosel in northern Iraq.

Yacoubian, in her early forties, holds a bachelor’s degree in mass
communication from the Lebanese University. Apart from working in the
media, she taught Arabic for eight years, and worked as an adviser to
the Lebanese youth minister before joining the Beirut-based Armenian
committee, which was formed in 2005.

Besides Beirut, committees are also based in Washington, Brussels,
Moscow and the Armenian capital, Yerevan, that aim to preserve the
ethnicity of their communities.

"We are an artistic people," she said in reference to Armenians
excelling in several professions and in arts and crafts, such as
sculpture, ceramics and painting.

"Our presence is peaceful. We don’t have political aims. All we are
seeking to do is to spread awareness of our identity and history."

And, Yacoubian added, the "most important issue in the life of each
Armenian" is the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians killed by the
Ottoman Turks during the years 1915-1923, through systematic
massacres and starvation.

Turkey denies there was a genocide. While it acknowledges the death
of many Armenians, it adds the figure is below one million.

Until recently, Turks considered the issue of the genocide as a
"taboo" subject. Armenians insist on getting the Turkish government
to acknowledge what happened as "genocide."

Today, nearly three million Armenians live in Armenia, and five
million others live among the diaspora. At the same time, they are
part of the Arab population in several countries, including Lebanon,
Iran, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. As Yacoubian puts it, "We are
Arab citizens with Armenian roots."

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