BERLIN — Every year on April 24, Armenians and Germans gather in the historic St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt and the French Cathedral in Berlin to pay homage to those who perished. Representatives of the government, the Armenian ambassador and other diplomats, local political leaders, and leaders of the religious communities speak, and a special guest holds a keynote address.
This year was different. Not only in the political and business capital cities were there events, but also in numerous other locations, during the entire week of April 21 to 28, from a gathering at the Ecumenical Monuments in Berlin, to other cities and towns: Neuwied, Hanau, Braunschweig, Leipzig, Cologne, Duisburg, Bremen, Munich, Halle and er Saale, Hamburg, Potsdam, Nürnberg, Höchstadt/Aisch, Giessen, Bielefeld and Kehl.And the commemorations were not only solemn, but eminently political. On April 25-26, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was expected in Berlin, for talks with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The timing was probably not coincidental, but what awaited him in the German capital was perhaps a surprise.
Moreno Ocampo Calls It Genocide
The ceremony in Frankfurt’s St. Paul’s church, where the first popularly elected German National Assembly convened in 1848, was organized by the Central Council of Armenians in Germany (ZAD), the Diocese of the Armenian Church and the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia. ZAD Chairman of the Board Jonathan Spangenberg opened the event and Armenian Ambassador Viktor Yengibaryan delivered an address. Greetings came from City Treasurer Dr. Bastian Bergerhoff, Vice President of the Hessen State Parliament Angela Dorn-Rancke, and Martin Rössler, State Secretary of the Hessen Interior Ministry. Corinna Kulenkamp provided a literary contribution and Primate of the Diocese Bishop Serovpé Isakhanyan concluded the event with a prayer.
The guest speaker was Dr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who issued an expert report last August on the threat of genocide in Artsakh. Moreno Ocampo’s speech was a bold denunciation of Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian policy, a charge he would repeat days later in Berlin. Remembering the genocide, Moreno Ocampo posed the question of how it started on April 24. “Destroying the leadership was the strategy in 1915,” he stated, “and destroying the leadership is the strategy in 2024.” He said that last September, “all the Armenians living in Artsakh were victims of genocide; they were removed by force and starvation from their ancestral land. In addition, twenty-three of them, including three former Artsakh presidents and five other community leaders, were incarcerated by Azerbaijan.” They remain in Baku, in prison, up to the present. The message delivered to the Armenians by these measures was that “if you come back to Nagorno-Karabakh, you will be starved, incarcerated, or killed. The Armenian leaders became hostages.”
Moreno Ocampo then turned to the responsibility of Germany’s political class, saying that “this historic place,” St. Paul’s, “should be an informal parliament to represent the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh,” who otherwise have no such representation or “judges to protect their rights.” The former prosecutor offered his assistance to Scholtz “by providing detailed information” on Aliyev’s intentions. Here he referred to the American Judge Gassia Apkarian, of the Center for Truth and Justice, who a week earlier had called on the ICC to investigate Aliyev for genocide. Although it is difficult to prove intent to commit genocide if the perpetrator conceals it, Moreno Ocampo said that Apkarian had succeeded, by providing proof in statements made by the Azerbaijani president over the last decade. These included a statement in April 15, in which Aliyev warned, “If you do not want to die, then get out of Azerbaijani lands.” Then he quoted Aliyev’s declaration last September, that if the Armenians failed to do so “of their own free will, we will chase them away like dogs, and we are doing that.”
