With my yesterday’s speech we opened a space for the Republic of Armenia, for Artsakh, because during the whole negotiation process of the previous period, Armenia and Artsakh were deprived of political and diplomatic space. We are opening a path for Armenia and Artsakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during his concluding speech at the National Assembly.
“Exotic thoughts are voiced, those thoughts are voiced as a threat that if something does not happen in this or that way, we will take out the people of Karabakh from Karabakh or the people of Karabakh will leave. There is an impression that there are people who dream that the people leave Karabakh as soon as possible. No, we say that the people of Karabakh should not leave Karabakh, the people of Karabakh should live in Karabakh, the people of Karabakh should have rights, freedoms, status in Karabakh․ That’s what we are talking about, and yes, we have opened that space.
Our martyrs fell in order to open a perspective for Karabakh and Armenia, because since 1998, with that step-by-step-package versions, the Armenians had been deprived of that space. We are paving the way to get our people, thousand apologies, out of the status of a sacrificial lamb, and finally, ok, let’s understand why that war happened, and why the war of 2016 did not take place earlier. It was not us to decide whether the war should be or not, we did not decide anything. I am standing at this rostrum today and I say no, Armenia is a sovereign state, we must return the right to making decisions over things, because we are a country, not a cowshed. We are country, we are citizens, we are not sacrificial lamb for others to decide how much and how to slaughter us and how much to forgive us.
We are a state, we are a nation, we are sovereign, yes we are self-respecting, and yes, we are bleeding, but we have dignity and we will not allow someone else to decide or take away our rights by manipulating us, introducing models of patriotism, telling us that we have to be patriotic in the way that is in our interests. We must be patriotic in the way that is in the interests of these children (the NA session was attended by students of 198 Yerevan High School – ed.) I don’t know what they are told, I even don’t know what their teachers tell them, but today I tell them that I will not allow our generations to be kept in the status of a sacrificial lamb.
How much is it possible to play on the emotions of the victims? I kneel and kneeled at the tombs of the victims, and I know and I said for what our martyrs fell. They have fallen to force us not to allow to be kept in the status of sacrificial lamb for centuries. We are a state, we are a country, we are citizens, we are a proud people, we have millennia-old history, but we must write and learn our history ourselves, instead of allowing others to write our history and deliver us that history.
A very correct assessment was made: does Azerbaijan want peace or to what extent what we say is acceptable for Azerbaijan? These are very grounded concerns, but it is about something else. When I say that we have opened a space before us, I mean, well, in the end, we have to bring issues to the agenda, we have to fill the regional agenda with content. That’s part of the same process. It is enough to constantly impose agendas on us, do you understand that we have never imposed any agenda? Why and how much land have we preserved? We have preserved as long as and as much as it has been to the benefit of many others. Let’s understand this, well, how long will this continue? It’s again Good Friday and The Bible says “You will listen and listen, but never understand; you will look and look, but never perceive”. It is enough, we have looked so long, let us see, we have listened so much, let us perceive.
Because now we are not talking about ongoing things, we are talking about being or not being of Armenia or Artsakh. Armenia and Artsakh, by the way, this is very important, they are not just pieces of land, because all the former pieces of land of Armenia still exist on the planet. Armenia is people, it is a status, it is a state, it is a subject of international legal relations. This is what we want. And, yes, there is a lot of aggression around us, that aggression is not just where we see it, that aggression is in many other places. What to do about this aggression? We have to manage that aggression. That aggression must be managed, there is no other option.
And I’m glad we had this discussion. A very important question was raised. They say, bring back the conscript servicemen, take the contract ones to the border. But I am sorry, if a war breaks out, those conscripts must all go to the front line. We do not want to take away the conscripts, replace them with the contract soldiers, we want to bring everyone back, because we want to have a border and border guards. Dear people, today they say that they ensured peace. As long as there is a soldier on the border, it is not peace. Peace is when there is a border guard at the border, and issues are settled through border marks, not positions, fortifications, heights, caution from snipers. We had about 1,000 casualties during the so-called peace period, some in non-combat conditions. This is not peace.
This is what I want to say, and I want to say thank you for the discussion, because it was so important. By and large, we must say that this content that I presented was born and fermented as a result of our many discussions, debates, conversations. There was a lot of talk about this speech, and now the names of the victims is much speculated, our martyrs are being manipulated a lot. I just want to end the speech, the discussion of this issue, with a minute of silence in honor of our martyrs, our homage to them, because the agenda we propose is the most important way to honor their memory, to pay due respect to their sacrifices,” Pashinyan said.
