Montebello Mayor Jack Hadjinian (Photo by Raul Romero Jr, Contributing Photographer)
Montebello City Councilman Jack Hadjinian’s decision to resign from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Youth Foundation Board of Directors in protest of its decision to hold an Aug. 12 town hall meeting for the Azerbaijani American community — which was later cancelled — has triggered the latest flareup in the already tense relationship between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities.
Hadjinian, the first Montebello mayor of Armenian heritage, is up for re-election, seeking a third City Council term in November. He’d served for four years on the board of the foundation board, which raises money for youth programs.
“I can no longer support such a reckless leader as Sheriff (Alex) Villanueva who continues to challenge the Board of Supervisors, and now has planned an event with a terrorist group known as the Azerbaijani Community,” said Hadjinian in a Facebook post announcing his resignation.
“The Azeris are spreading anti-Armenian propaganda and Sheriff Villanueva is giving them a platform to further extend their lies across the County of Los Angeles,” Hadjinian wrote in the post he later made private. “I will never compromise my principles just to carry a badge or an ID card.”
The town hall meeting was scheduled after a July 21 protest, sponsored by the Armenian Youth Federation, was staged at the Azerbaijan Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
“The Azerbaijanis showed up to the demonstration with hammers and crow bars,” Hadjinian said.
A press release from the Los Angeles Police Department said more than 500 Armenian protesters showed up at the Azerbaijan consulate and were confronted by as many as 50 counter-protesters across the street. During the protest, the two opposing groups became increasingly agitated, which resulted in a physical altercation, the release said.
In an unsigned emailed response on Wednesday, the Consulate General of Azerbaijan denied the charges and said detectives are investigating three hate crime/battery incidents that occurred during the protest.
Three Azerbaijani victims came forward and have reported the assaults to police, which are being investigated as hate crimes, police said in the release. The three victims sustained non-life threatening injuries during the altercation, and received medical treatment at a local hospital.
The protest was over a confrontation between the two Asian countries that began July 12 in Tavush, a northern province of Armenia near the border of Azerbaijan. The fighting claimed at least sixteen lives in the most serious outbreak of hostilities in the South Caucasus since 2016, according to Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in Carnegie Endownment for International Peace, in an article he wrote for the organization.
“Since the late Soviet era, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnically Armenian breakaway region of Azerbaijan,” Stronski wrote. “After the Soviet Union collapsed, ethnic Armenians in the territory declared their independence from Azerbaijan. But Azerbaijan still considers the area part of its sovereign territory.”
The consulate also called on Hadjinian to apologize.
Hadjinian insulted hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani-Americans by calling them “a terrorist group,” the consulate wrote, branding the comments as racist.
Meanwhile, in a post on his Twitter site, Villanueva said Hadjinian misunderstood the reason for the meeting.
Update regarding Azerbaijani-American community conversation: pic.twitter.com/SyIn7WCgiI
— Alex Villanueva (@LACoSheriff) August 12, 2020
“Recently there was a social media posting, which stated the community conversation that was going to be held today was going to discuss Azerberjian-Armenian relations,” Villanueva tweeted about the town hall meeting,
“That was erroneously stated and was not the intended purpose for the community conversation,” he said. “The community conversation as going to only be about public safety concerns. I apologize for the confusion and concerns that occurred as a result of this. We will continue to focus on community conversations regarding public safety which originate from within Los Angeles County’s diverse communities.”
Hadjinian said he talked with Sheriff’s Department Capt. John Burcher to discuss his planned resignation “but he failed to appreciate the sensitivity of the political overtones that will come out of this event,” Hadjinian said in his email to the board.
“He was defensive and reluctant to listen,” Hadjinian said, “while I was trying to explain to him avoiding the unnecessary political ramifications from the more than 300,000 Armenian-Americans in Los Angeles County.”
After Hadjinian’s resignation became public last week, hundreds of emails with identical comments — all from the U.S. Azeris Network, headlined “Decry Jack Hadjinian’s racist remarks!” — were sent to Montebello city officials and this news media group.
Most were sent from people with addresses on the East Coast. The consulate said it is not responsible for the emails.
“Please take a minute to send this letter to the Montebello city government and the local media to inform them about the hateful and racist message from one of the elected officials who is supposed to serve people, not divide and harm them,” the email said. “There is no place for a racist in our government, both local and federal!”
Mayor Sal Melendez said he had received about 500 of the emails and in response met with the Armenian National Committee members and others to get a “better understanding of the situation.”
Councilwoman Kimberly Cobos Cawthorne, who has received more than 400 emails, said she’s sorry the incident “put Montebello in a bad way.”
Hadjinian said he has been asked to reconsider his statements, but for now he said “I need to cool off a little bit.”