Categoria: In English

Armenian community in Jerusalem: victims twice

Llibre Towards Golgota sobre la comunitat armènia a Jerusalem

ARMENIAN COMMUNITY IN JERUSALEM

Looking carefully at the map of the old city in Jerusalem, we can see that the area is divided into four quarters: the Muslim, the Christian, the Armenian and the Jewish. Surprisingly, the Armenian one is named following the origin of their community, not their religion, as the other three quarters. Indeed, the Armenians are Christians (the majority orthodox, and a small group are catholic). The three first quarters are porous, that’s to say, Christian and Muslim are deeply mixed. The Armenian area is mostly inhabited by the Armenian community, who is not Arab, but it’s historically Palestinian.

«We are Armenians born in Jerusalem. We come from the people who, thousand years ago, arrived as pilgrims, and the Christian Patriarchate boosted them to settle to guard the Holy Places… and you can find many Holy Places in Jerusalem! – told me Anshelous Zakarian, a witty , sharp 80- year-old woman-   This is how a large community, who had reached about 20.000 people, was established.”

The Armenian Quarter’s streets have an appearance of walled compounds, whose indoors store green gardens to accommodate several households. The names of the streets are written in Armenian alphabet, and we can see several historical sights of the Armenian history. Ararat, as an example, is the holy mountain of the Armenian community.  The religious presence is rich in monuments such as the St. James Cathedral, or St. George, as well as the several chapels in the Holy Sepulchre. Moreover, there are Armenian restaurants with delicious food, museums, a rich tradition of Armenian pottery, and a legendary generation of artistical photographers with pictures of historical Jerusalem.

One detail caught our eye: we can see texts, maps and pictures on the walls of the Old City, which give us memory of the genocide of the Armenian community by Young Turks in 1915. Often, the posters appear as scratched and spoiled, as if someone didn’t want them to be witnessed by the large number of tourists wandering along the streets. Many people of the Armenian community say that this is done by Israelis (who have been pressing the Armenian and the Arab community since Israel was created) with the will of hiding their genocide. True or false, it’s a fact that the Armenian Quarter is heavily pressed by the Israeli side of Jerusalem, grabbing their properties; furthermore, the Jewish Quarter is attached to the Armenian one, which enters its streets.

Hence, if something can be found in the Armenian community in Palestine, is people who are double victim: victims of the Armenian genocide in 1915 in the former Turkey, and afterwards, victims of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine by Zionist militias in 1948 (especially those who lived in the west side of Jerusalem).

GENOCIDE

The book “Towards Golgota” by Arda Arsenian, is a moving witness of the long journey to Jerusalem of her grandfather Hagop Arsenian, escaping the genocide.

«After fourteen months of deadly and torturous exile, arriving in Jerusalem and settling as a family in one of the quarters of the Armenian Convent was one of the utmost bliss and happiness.» Gone were the fearful swords and bayonets of the gendarmes’, gone were the gachken, khekhen, chekhen shouts which struck us like lightning and filled us with terror and fear. Gone were the insecure days and the deadly Damoclean sword which had haunted us for weeks.”

Anshelous, as Armenian Palestinian, remembers that her parents explained to her about the arrival of the second generation of Armenians in the XXth century, escaping from the genocide. They were hosted with open arms and integrated. However, they have always been distinguished from the old settled Armenians, even for their rough Arabic. “Thousands of orphans arrived by train in Palestine. They were hosted in convents, they were provided with clothes (many of them didn’t have clothes), they were schooled… Some families left them their children to their fate because, if they had stayed, they would be dead.”

The Arab nations accepted and hosted the Armenian community. Moreover, almost all the Armenian family natives from Palestine adopted an orphan. My family, for example, adopted one and treated him as their son. There were also weddings of migrated Armenians with the native ones. What’s more, some Armenian children found their families in Jerusalem or in the Middle East! The child adopted by my family, for example, found his mother in Iraq some years after!

We never give up talking about our genocide! Too many Armenians have suffered a lot, and nobody wants to recognize it! Nobody supports us. We would settle with Turkey saying, “Yes, it happened”. Up to now they have kept silent. That’s why we are annoyed, with everything that has happened to us.”

48 and 67

Anshelous was also a victim of 1948 and 1967’s conflicts. “Before 48, and during the British Mandate, to some extent, we were well treated and educated. We lived better than during the Ottoman Empire, a period when we were very poor! The British brought us to a better live. It was the flourishing period of the Armenian photography. We were very happy, and there was no difference between Arabs or Jewish and us. The Jewish at that time  were Palestinians like us, they spoke in Arabic, not in Hebrew.  When the Zionists arrived, everything changed. Some of them, after 1948, visited us, and they were really surprised that my family, who used to own a very beautiful property, were living in a house basement with one single window. My father died poorly, penniless…  if we think of the house that he had!

The life of Anshelous, like all the Armenian and Palestinian’s communities’ life in Jerusalem, changed again when in 1948 the city was divided in two. Then in 1967, the Israelis occupied the Palestinian side, a side occupied so far by Jordan. “Just after our wedding my husband was killed. It was in 1948. When the expulsion of Palestinian population by Zionist troupes started, a Transjordanian commander offered us to go to Jordan for our safety. We did, but in a short truce period, my husband came back. Crossing the bordering street between East and West Jerusalem, a bullet shoot from the Nôtre Dâme building crossed his head. They brought me to Jordan telling me that my father was sick, but when I arrived, I found my husband was passing away in the hospital.

Then, in the 1967 war, I remember that they were shooting around my house 24 hours a day. Some of my relatives were killed. After 6 days closed in a shelter, we got out. An Israeli soldier asked us in French if we were afraid, and he advised us to leave the country because the Jordan road was opened. We were already packing our suitcases, when a neighbour told us that if we left the house, we would lose it. Finally, we stayed. A lot of neighbours lost their properties.

Nowadays, 2,000 Armenian remain, but we were 20.000 at least! We live in minority here, we don’t have good positions and some of them migrated. I can’t imagine how the West Bank Armenians live! At least in Jerusalem we benefit of some advantages, but in the West Bank there is no work, there is nothing! Nowadays we don’t know where we are! We are not Israelis, because our ID just recognizes us as Jerusalem residents. We are 2nd class citizens, and this didn’t happen before 1948.”

Published in Dialogal, 2013

 

Crimes against hazara people: muslim shiite in the heart of Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

British ethnomusicologist Veronica Doubleday wrote Three women in Herat, the most complete legacy existing about daily life and music of Afghan women.  She lived there in the 70s, before the devastating and poisoning period of the several wars that destroyed the country. When she describes Latif Khan, the father of one of the 3 women, she remarks: “in the past there had been sectarian disharmony in Herat city and many Sunnis still held misconceptions about Shiahs and openly disliked them. As a musician and a Shiah, Latif Khan’s position in the community was double sensitive. Religious prejudices against music persisted: some mullahs taught that music was the work of devil and distracted people from prayer and correct living.”

Afghanistan borders in the west with a predominantly Shiite area, culturally Persian: current Iran. Notwithstanding, it’s a multicultural country where Sunni people such as the Pashto (between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s border)  coexist with others such as the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Turkmens, the Aimaqs among  others. The Hazara, settled in the core of Afghanistan, in the Hazarajat, are easily recognizable due to their mongoloid physiognomy because, despite their mixed nature as other Afghans, they have bounds with other peoples in the Mongolian area.  Genetic studies confirm that they could be descendant of Genghis Khan’s troops; even some Hazara family names derive from some names of their soldiers.

The Hazara are the Shiite of Afghanistan, one of the muslim’s branches who believe that the only legitimate descendant of Prophet Mohammed is Alí ibn Abi-Talib, his cousin and married to his daughter Fatima. According to them, only their descendants could lead the faithful. Rivalry between the Shiites and the Sunni has been a constant in the religious conflicts in the Middle East. This tense relationship has also existed in Afghanistan, and was  specially fostered by the Talibans at the end of the 90s, because they strongly uphold the Sunnite nature of the Islam, and consider Shiism a betrayal. As an example of the relevance of this rivalry, the celebration of Imam Hussain (widely spread in other Shiite communities) has recently increased among the Hazara practices, so as to give a political meaning relating it with the Taliban massacres against the Hazara.

Indeed, the abuses and massacres of the Talibans against Hazara people are documented by the NGO Human Rights Watch, especially in the 2001’s report where the crimes in Yakaolang and Robatak, in the central region of Hazarajat  are documented. HRW says: “Ethnic minorities, particularly Hazara people, have been vulnerable in the areas in conflict, and the Taliban forces have committed large scale abuses against Hazara civils in total impunity.”

In 2002, just after the fall of the Talibans, I visited the country accompanied by a Hazara woman who became afterwards a relevant politician, Habiba Sarabi (Minister of Women’s Affairs and Governor of Bamyan province). Having the knowledge of some of the most frightening stories in the recent story of Hazara people, we visited an internal displaced Hazara people’s camp, set in Kabul, who came from the prosperous region of Shomali Valley. The scene was dantesque, ruin on ruin. People were living in demolished buildings destroyed by lordwars in the cruel war just before the uprise of the Talibans. Before this war the building had been a Russian settlement in the period of the Soviet invasion. The annihilation sensation of the ruins was the devastation background of human people living on the rubbish of the destroyed city of Kabul after the fall of the Talibans, without any income to feed themselves.

The women in the community, wrapped with smoke of an improvised bread oven, the only nourishment available week after week, explained to us: “Those destroyed buildings were inhabited by Russian families before the Mujahideens (lordwars) expelled them in the Kabul attack. We were expelled from the Shomali region. We arrived here when the Talibans occupied our valley, deported the people and brought us direct to these destroyed buildings. We lived here for three years. The Talibans have already fallen, but nobody pays attention to us. Some humanitarian organizations have come here to distribute some humanitarian help forms, but our names were erased from the lists. We are left without food distribution and we are here without any kind of attention. Many of us are widows who take care of our grandchildren, while our daughters are begging on the streets.”

Other families went to other quarters of the city such as Khar Khona: «When the Taliban took our village in the Shomali Valley, we were forced to leave. A lorry took us to Jalalabad, and from there they wanted to take us to the old buildings of the Russian Embassy. But we escaped, and from Jalalabad we went here to Khar Khona, in Kabul. When the Taliban reached our village, we locked ourselves in our houses shouting: “we don’t want to leave our houses”. They told us that it would only be for three days, and then we would be able to come back. Now it’s three years since we haven’t been here, without a home and far away from our village.”

Even harder were the testimonies of the attacks committed in 1998 in Mazar-e-Sharif where 8.000 people are estimated to have been killed. Hazara people were the main target of the Taliban.  A group of women explained to me their personal experience of the massacre: «Men were brought to the central square where they were killed, while others were killed when they were found in the middle of the street. A man was killed in the middle of the street accompanied by his son: he was standing, and a Taliban hit his head until being beheaded. Even a child asked them about his parents, and they answered to him that they were thrown dead on the ground.  They had killed them all. Afterwards they took all the dead bodies and buried them in a mass grave. They plucked their skin and defaced them, but we recognized them by the clothes or their size… a mother always recognises her son.”

Finally, it should be mentioned abuses committed against the Hazara people during the destructive siege in Kabul between April 1992 and March 1993, before the Taliban period. Neither faction gets rid of the responsibilities of these atrocities (for instance the Shii party Harakat-e Islami is responsible for a large number of crimes), but the atrocities against the Hazara neighbourhoods are specially frightening.  Nowadays the problem is that these criminals are part of the government after the Taliban, leading the transition of the country without justice. A problem that touches the 100% of the population.

 “We were attacked by Pashto militias. I’ve seen with my own eyes that, if a woman wore a ring, they could cut her finger to steal it. Also, they cut their breasts and they mutilated them. They raped them. They beheaded a 6- month-old baby and they hanged him at the entry of the village. All my children were killed. What else can they do to us? Their crimes are irreparable, but nobody listens to us.

We always wonder: why all this pain? My three children have been killed: what was their crime? They were just children, they have not even become adults. Even children haven’t escaped from their crimes! Where are our leaders to talk about justice? Our enemy is the only one who escaped from justice: our poured blood will never get justice.”

Published in catalan in Dialogal, December 2013