A group of Diaspora Armenians, concerned about the situation in Kashatagh, sent letters to the presidents of the Republics of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh in September.

The group invites others to sign a petition, which can be accessed online at http://www.kashatagh.com. The authors of the petition have presented a number of issues regarding Kashatagh, which had also been earlier reported by Hetq.

It seems at first glance that every Armenian would be concerned about Kashatagh, where there used to be a population of 20,000 people a few years ago, but where only 7, 000 remain today. 130 teachers have left Kashatagh only this year. I met two school principals who moved from Kashatagh to Yerevan. They bitterly noted that nobody had even bothered to ask them why they were leaving.

The website http://www.kashatagh.com offers the opportunity to sign the letter addressed to the two presidents. Around five hundred people have already added their names to the list of signatories. They are Armenians from the United States, Canada, Russia and other countries. The residents of Armenia are the smallest group within that list, consisting of a handful of people.

It seems that over the past few years, society has been demoralized and disappointed to the extent that the fate of this strategic piece of land connecting Armenia and Karabakh is no longer of public interest.

Only a few hundred people are concerned with the future of our motherland; only this group has sensed the real danger…

It is hard to understand how the whole nation can unite for the cause of genocide recognition, can spend so many resources on it and spare no effort or expense, but also be indifferent to its real motherland and hard-earned victories.

Armenian political parties are only interested in one thing – seizing power in order to make money, start businesses and exploit the people. They have nothing in common with the state and the people – this is true of both the ruling authorities and the opposition. None of them wants to speak out on these issues. And this is not because they are afraid of being wrong, but simply because they have nothing to say – this holds for both the 115-year old Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Prosperous Armenia, founded recently and mainly dealing in the distribution of wheat and potatoes. That is why Nazo, an Armenian from Beirut who lives in the village of Ditsmayri in Kashatagh said, “It's all hopeless.”

Photo by Ara Oshagan