I stand in solidarity with the Armenian people. I stand with all people who face the threat of empire and boots of oppression -- from Los Angeles to Nagorno-Karabakh. Our Armenian American communities are calling on all non-Armenians to stand with them in solidarity, raising our voices to our federal, state and local officials to call for a boycott of all products coming from and place sanctions on Turkey for their role in supplying weapons to Azerbaijan, which are being used as a means of ethnic cleansing of Armenians. We are also being called on to make our voices heard for sanctions against Azerbaijan.
The horror and dislocation of this coordinated offensive from Azerbaijan and their friends in Turkey -- against Armenians, has come with cluster bombs, drones, and privatized violence in the form of Syrian mercenaries and ISIS fighters.
The “authoritarian petro state” Azerbaijan, in their insatiable thirst for control of oil resources in Nagorno-Karabakh, have caused the death and destruction of thousands of Armenians in some of the most brutal ways possible. Many fear those numbers will rise unless a ceasefire is reached immediately.
Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region are under constant, brutal and illegal attacks.
Monday night at the rally I was shown an unpublished image of what an illegal phosphorous chemical weapon had done to a 6-year-old Armenian boy. It broke my heart and I felt like I wanted to vomit.
The Geneva Convention has outlawed these chemical weapons and their use is a crime against humanity to which leaders in Azerbaijan need to be held accountable.
In another picture I was a man holding a severed head by the ear because the victim had no hair.
And so it is with the express desire to defuse the possibility of a larger, and more disastrous proxy war, that I stand, as President of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council with full support of our Board Of Directors, with calls for Los Angeles City Hall and non-Armenian people of conscience to stand with our Armenian American neighbors, and apply real pressure to Turkey, so they may be encouraged to end their support to the hostilities so Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh can self-realize as a free people living in peace.
And peace is what I sang about at the rally on Monday night on Hollywood Blvd. I sang a song I learned when I was 5 years old. A message of peace ingrained in my very soul. Please stand up with me and the Armenian people for peace.
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