♱ Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delivered a powerful pro-Artsakh message yesterday in a statement and video shared live with Armenian Americans gathered at the White House for a protest demanding justice for the Armenian Genocide, organized by the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF).
Kennedy delivered a videotaped address on Armenian Remembrance Day to the demonstrators in which he called for tough U.S. sanctions against Azerbaijan, denounced the Azeris for taking Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh “hostage,” and demanded a right of return for all of the Armenian refugees forced from the region in 2023.
“Though today we commemorate the 109th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, the plight of the Armenians is not over – and we must recommit ourselves to end the ethnic cleansing and defend Armenians’ right to self-determination,” Kennedy said.
The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) said Biden was “shamefully silent” about the conquest of Artsakh, which the committee referred to as “genocide.” Worse, it said this genocide was a crime Biden “actively armed and morally emboldened.”
“He’s using remembrance of a past genocide (by Turkey) to cover up a current genocide (by Azerbaijan),” ANCA charged.
The ANCA gave Biden only tepid praise for recognizing the Armenian Genocide in 2021 because he only did so “after Armenians worldwide, after decades of work, got the ball to the one yard line – via both house of Congress, all 50 states, countless municipalities, and multiple NATO allies.”
“It’s not that Biden was a bystander to Azerbaijan’s genocide of Artsakh’s Christian Armenians. He was an upstander – but on the side of genocide. He armed and emboldened Azerbaijan as it systematically blockaded, terrorized & ethnically cleansed indigenous, innocent civilians,” the group said.
ANCA’s program director for Washington DC, Alex Galitsky, credited Biden for being “the first President to recognize the Armenian Genocide” but said that made it all the more outrageous that just one day before that landmark recognition, Biden “reauthorized military aid to Azerbaijan – a decision that would embolden Baku’s genocidal regime.”
Galitsky said Biden “recognized one genocide only to enable another.” He also accused Biden of turning a “blind eye” to Azerbaijan’s punishing blockade of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh before the final attack began. The blockade caused a massive humanitarian crisis and was denounced by some observers as an attempt to use “starvation as a means of genocide”
Galitsky was also unsparing in his criticism of Biden’s predecessor, and possible successor, Donald Trump for sending “millions in military aid to Azerbaijan before the 2020 Artsakh War.” He expressed a preference for dark-horse candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. as “the only candidate calling for accountability for Azerbaijan’s genocide of Artsakh.”
Biden did indeed keep money flowing to Azerbaijan, even after it fought a war against Armenia.
