I finally understood what “young generation” means. I found out the meaning of this during my recent visit to the regions of Armenia and Karabagh while talking with the parents, teachers and elders of the mentioned generation. But let’s leave the “young generation” aside for the moment and draw our attention to the most important current event: Azerbaijani murderer Ramil Safarov’s court hearings in Budapest.
I finally got a chance to see Ramil Safarov on April 6 or 7. What I saw was an average person with a normal physical appearance. If the volume of the television was turned off and if I were not to hear the interpretations of the “HyeLur” (Armenian News) reporters about how Safarov murdered the Armenian spy with an axe and further details, I would think that the young Azerbaijani had simply found himself in court for financial mechanisms or doing business without a license.
The host of “HyeLur” said that Safarov’s last words didn’t leave a big impression on the jury and he wasn’t able to show himself as Soghomon Tehleryan because his defense was based on his innocence.
This may sound strange and even go against nationalism, but I kind of feel pity for Safarov because those kinds of people are born with the deficient propaganda spread by the deficient authorities. It’s that propaganda that turns a man killing someone with an axe into a murderer and then picks strategies for proving that man’s innocence. Those authorities are simply saying that with that propaganda, they are depriving the person of reasoning.
I truly feel pity for Safarov and believe that there really is no difference between him and the axe, which has been shown as evidence. If the person who has turned into an axe is not sentenced, then at least have the axe be sentenced for becoming evidence of the crime committed.
We watch American films where the person being sentenced for a crime in court is suddenly released and then the second part of the film shows how that person meanders in the labyrinth of justice. I am just like the film-viewer with the same tension and I want to see Safarov be released, return to his homeland and try to find out who has turned him into an axe and why, try to get revenge from that person, from the people, the system, which considers killing someone with an axe in his sleep as obligatory.
I want Safarov to become a hero. After all, didn’t that person, the people and the system, promise to declare him a hero and not fulfill that promise? But the imaginative continuation of the imaginary film is not very promising. The person, the people and the system finally catch the hero meandering through the labyrinth of justice and sentence him in his homeland. In order to not fulfill its promise to declare him a hero, the Azerbaijani court is once again bringing up his innocence and commissioning Safarov to a psychiatric center instead of jail.
It was a pretty hard film without a happy ending. There is no happy ending and can’t be one in a film, where human values don’t form the basis of the education and public propaganda, but rather revenge and carrying out the mission.
In one of the regions of Karabagh, the principal of a school shows the new building and feels pity that there is no gym. It’s natural. He brings up the young generation’s Armenian discipline as the reason for why it’s necessary to have a gym in the school.
“What does the gym have to do with Armenian discipline?” the reader may ask.
It does. Apparently, the gym is necessary to train the young generation to become future soldiers. But when I ask the principal of the same school what the students will do after they graduate, he says that they will go to the army, become an official to protect our country and has a hard time trying to decide what else they can do besides serving in the army and becoming officials; in other words, something that the village youth can occupy itself with.
During my visit to Karabagh, someone found out that I was from Yerevan and complained about what Yerevan television networks broadcast (I don’t think he meant the song by Andre). He said that they should broadcast programs about nationalism so that the young generation grows with the spirit of nationalism. In response to the question “What should those programs talk about?” he immediately answered: topics about nationalism. What does this mean? It means our glorious past. Which past? Well, when our soldiers sacrificed their lives for the country.
Now, I think the reader understood what it means to have a “young generation”. In closing, I would like to say that “young generation” is a group of people, which doesn’t have the opportunity to do creative work and live the good life, has hatred and revenge instilled in the minds, people who are taught to die and become heroes instead of actually living. This is the young generation, kind of like the lamb that is sacrificed but with a little twist: the lamb being sacrificed doesn’t know what’s coming, whereas the young generation can figure out what’s coming by using its wit.
A child walking with his father near the school or kindergarten named after Gurgen Markaryan may one day ask his father who Gurgen Markaryan is. The father will probably tell the child that he was a man, whom we had promised to turn into a hero, but someone else, who was also promised to be declared a hero, axed him in his sleep. The first man died. The second…also died. These are the young generations.