Some leaders of the beleaguered Armenian community in Syria on Thursday spoke out against a mass evacuation of its members remaining in the war-torn city of Aleppo where the security situation has deteriorated further in recent weeks.
Armenia’s government is facing growing calls to help them flee one of the epicenters of deadly fighting between Syrian government troops and rebel forces. Many Aleppo Armenians are apparently ready to take refuge in their ancestral homeland.
“We are not intent on dissolving the community,” said Zhirayr Reisian, the spokesman for the Aleppo diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, a key community structure. “We are obliged to help those who are having difficulties, which is what we have been doing. But we have nothing to do outside Aleppo or Syria.”
“We are busy preserving the community,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) by phone.
Reisian said the church faithful are free to leave Aleppo. But he made clear that the diocese leadership will not give them financial and logistical assistance for that purpose. Instead, he added, it will continue helping remaining Aleppo Armenians with free food and other essential goods.
Some Syrian Armenians who have taken refuge in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh in recent years criticized this stance. “I can understand that policy but they just can’t sacrifice innocent people for the sake of community stability,” said Hripsime Katanian, a Karabakh resident who has relatives in Aleppo. She said that like many other Aleppo Armenians they would love to get out but cannot afford a journey that has become very expensive because of heavy fighting in and around Syria’s largest city.
“If people die what community will they be talking about one month later?” Katanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “I am asking, begging the [Armenian] state and all Armenians around the world to wake up and save those poor people.”
Katanian also said that she is ready to accommodate several Syrian Armenians in her Karabakh home. Some Syrian nationals of Armenian descent living in Yerevan also expressed such readiness.
“Let them come to Armenia and each Aleppo Armenian families here will take care of them,” one of them commented on Facebook. “They will have shelter and be safe. I think that we all are ready to help.”
“We hope that Armenia’ government will quickly bring Aleppo Armenian families to the homeland,” wrote another Syrian Armenian user.
A senior official in Yerevan said on Wednesday that the government would move to evacuate Aleppo Armenians only at the request of local community leaders.
Syria had an estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians before the outbreak of the bloody conflict there four years ago. Around 13,000 of them currently reside in Armenia.