10:15 p.m., December 25, 2021
Here is their platform: “We wanted to go to Armenia, a few days before Christmas. We saw there the courage of a people, worthy in the test, displaying in the face of external provocations, those of powerful neighbors who would like to reduce it, the internal power. strong souls, the intact resistance of those who, following Ernest Renan, know that a nation is above all a spiritual principle. We have also heard the words of this country-message because Armenia, from the depths of its pain , has something to tell us. To us, Europeans. To us, French.
What it tells us is what we no longer say: the dignity of a people resides first and foremost in its sovereignty. And if there is a people who know the price of a sovereign nation, who paid for it with their blood through the genocide of 1915, it is the Armenian people. We are not unaware of the complexity of the geostrategic stakes in this pivotal region. But no diplomatic precaution can justify that Armenian sovereignty is amputated, under pressure from Azerbaijan and its Turkish protector. The international community must not only fulfill its humanitarian duties, but also defend Armenia’s political rights.
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First Christian kingdom, whose recumbent statue of the last king rests in the basilica of Saint Denis, Armenia is our sister
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But Armenia also shows us what we no longer see: the history of men is first and foremost that of civilizations. Theirs is ours. Because their roots are ours. First Christian kingdom, whose recumbent statue of the last king rests in the basilica of Saint Denis, Armenia is our sister. Always, in its painful history, it is towards Europe and especially towards France that it will invariably have focused its gaze and its hope. So when in 2020 Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, launched its offensive on the Nagorno-Karabash region, it was again towards Europe that Armenia turned.
And if Europe responded to this call with a certain timidity, taking refuge behind neutrality, the reason is not due to the only differences of views and interests between the European chancelleries: this common civilization which unites it with the Armenians, Europe no longer assumes it. However, Europe is not just a set of institutions, it is first and foremost a civilization.
And civilizations are deadly. It is this warning message that, following Paul Valéry, Armenia launches us: Europe can disappear if it no longer recognizes itself. By wanting to free itself from its roots, it leaves a wasteland plowed by the sowers of hatred, starting with Islamist hatred. This same hatred which struck the Armenians, through the crimes committed by the jihadist mercenaries in Nagorno-Karabach, as it already strikes the Europeans.
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French and Armenians, it is in the face of adversity that we become aware of this same civilization that unites us
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It is the same totalitarianism which unites those who, in Armenia, would like to reduce to ashes the monasteries and the churches, with those who, in France, massacred Father Hamel and shed blood in the basilica of Nice. Same ideology, same totalitarianism, same enemies: French and Armenians, it is in the face of adversity that we become aware of this same civilization that unites us.
These bonds of unity between our two nations, we will have to strengthen them. Through external action fully assuming our responsibility in the peace process within the Minsk group as well as within the European Union. We want an international conference for Armenia in Paris, which beyond security and the economy, also mobilizes Unesco on the protection of the cultural and religious heritage of Nagorno-Karabach. Through this interior relationship, too, which unites our two nations in the hearts of our Franco-Armenian compatriots.
Few peoples will have given as many great French to France as the Armenian people. Chance has nothing to do with it. France and Armenia carry with them more than their own destiny. This part of the universal that together we have, we must preserve for the greatness of our civilization. This European civilization of which Armenia remains the courageous sentinel. “
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