Armenia understood or forced to understand? Armenian ex-minister accuses Armenians

The Armenians more often turn back to the recent past and try to analyse what they have experienced especially when it becomes creepy from the present and the future. While rejecting revanchist slogans, more Armenian politicians confess. They try to justify sins and regret their deeds. Armenian Former Health Minister, MP from the ruling Civil Contract party Arsen Torosyan even published his “confession” on Facebook, which caused great indignation among representatives of the Armenian diaspora abroad.

In general, the split between the indigenous inhabitants of the country and the Armenian diaspora is becoming more obvious. Torosyan's conclusions, which greatly angered the Armenian diaspora, are a barometer of this phenomenon. Thus, the issue related to the disappearance of the billions of US dollars collected by Armenian international funds in different years is actively discussed in social networks, and the harshest statements on this topic are made. Some of them aroused scandal.

A point of view about the bosses of the Armenian diaspora, who live in clover in different prosperous countries, because they pocketed the lion's share of donations for their fellows by transferring only a penny from these fees to the Armenian residents, went viral in several Armenian media outlets.

If we believe such information, people are simply doomed to poverty in Armenia as their plight was the permanent reason for collecting diaspora funds, testifying to the presence of long-suffering Armenians, whose bosses openly misappropriate funds.

The same refers to the 44-day Armenia-Azerbaijan Karabakh war and Armenia’s defeat. The diaspora, with which Sargsyan’s and Kocharyan’s regimes so actively supported relations, did not work well with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The latter, having come to power, decided to restructure the entire system of corrupt ties, which caused terrible indignation among the Armenians abroad, who were used to being a “separate state”. That is why the diaspora reacted rather coldly to Pashinyan’s Karabakh war and disclaimed the lessons of defeat on the battlefield.

In fact, the Armenian citizens made other conclusions as a result of the recent war. They were left alone without support from wealthy foreign "countrymen", and now they realise the empty promises that the diaspora made once, guaranteeing big financial and significant political assistance in case of military actions.

Armenia is still in a difficult economic situation, following the course of an uncertain foreign policy and many representatives of the Armenian establishment began to realise everything. The falsity of the diaspora is more obvious, and the role of the victim of the Armenian population is more evident. The Armenians turned out to be a corruption mechanism rather than a single cohesive organism.

Ex-minister Torosyan was one of those releasing the entire situation.

“We made a mistake 30 years ago when, during the agony of a collapsing empire, we again chose death and war, became “winners” and were blinded by pride,” he said on Facebook.

Torosyan's statement caused the expected indignation among the Armenians of the diaspora. This post was disseminated by the Armenian media. There were suggestions that someone forced the ex-minister to write such a sad statement, infringing, in fact, on the authority of all Armenians.

Meanwhile, Torosyan used philosophy, while making bitter conclusions about the fate of the nation.

“The world has no price, it is priceless, like life. Life is priceless. To claim otherwise is to propagate death and war. Death can never be more valuable than life despite we have been told for centuries that life can never be more valuable than death,” he noted.

‘The people having privileges who would never perish, the parties that declared themselves "national" and justified their existence by death, romantic people, foreigners propagated death, rather than life. We succumbed to this propaganda and chose death, rather than life,” he added.

The role of MP of pro-Pashinyan’s party Torosyan is clear. He also acts as a tool of changes in the cabinet of ministers, which is trying to dissociate itself from the former criminal and radical past of Armenia, to reformat the views of Armenian society. However, one way or another, Torosyan's personal position is also visible in his thoughts.

Meanwhile, many Armenians consider their former president, Armenian oligarch Armen Sarkissian in the UK, to be a symbol of the venality of the diaspora, requiring those living in Armenia to be heroic on the battlefield and at the same time to be accepted as an inevitable victim of a beggarly existence. He did absolutely nothing for the country in the political arena, however, actively participated for his own benefit in various corruption schemes, for example, gold mining at the Amulsar gold mine.

Sarkissian called himself the link of the diaspora world and even offered his services to Moscow. However, realising that there was nothing to profit from in his homeland after the 44-day Karabakh war, he resigned and returned to the UK. Many people in Armenia consider this moment the beginning of the final discord between the diaspora and Pashinyan.

Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of the Netherlands Masis Abrahamyan was banned from entering Armenia in early August 2022. Representative of Dashnaktsutyun, MP from the Armenia bloc Ishkhan Saghatelyan has recently reported on social networks that Abrahamyan’s daughter, Syune Abrahamyan, a member of Dashnaktsutyun’s youth wing in the Netherlands, was banned from entering the country. Earlier, Co-chairman of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organisations of France, member of the bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) party Murad Papazyan was not allowed to appear in his homeland.

However, the ex-minister sees the main problem in the inability of the Armenians to admit their fatal mistakes. Apparently, he also means the bloody crimes that Armenian chauvinism and historical manipulations with “genocide” brought to other peoples.

“We still do not admit our mistakes, refuse to admit the reality and continue choosing death. The mistakes will be admitted rather than repeated. We are not entitled to repeat the same mistakes, rejecting objective reality or interpreting it according to our own whim,” Torosyan said.

It would be touching if everything was not so fatal. The Armenians’ stubbornness is unlikely to break through few attempts at rethinking the whole situation.