By Bruce Clayton
FRESNO (San Joaquin Valley Sun) — An arsonist struck Fresno’s Ararat Armenian cemetery, at 3 a.m. on Saturday, April 13, singeing nearly a dozen historic cypress trees that flank its main drive, a little more than a week before the cemetery and the city’s sizable Armenian-American community commemorate the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
The blaze has prompted community members and the cemetery’s managing board of directors to openly question whether the blaze was a deliberate attack ahead of the commemoration of a dark chapter for the local community.
According to cemetery management, eight trees were torched by an arsonist in Saturday’s wee hours.
The incident marks the sixth of its kind since the start of 2024, bringing down more than 19 trees total in the cemetery, whose service to the community dates back to 1885.
The arson comes 11 days before the cemetery’s newer section, dubbed Masis Ararat, is set to host an Armenian Genocide commemoration and flag raising at its Soghomon Tehlirian Monument, dedicated to the revolutionary who assassinated the architect of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I-era genocide against Armenians.
