Crime and Punishment

Rastinews — *Justice exalts nations; sin and crime debase them. (Soghomon)

April …

The month of mourning…

In these days when we mourn our dead who have no graves, news of fresh losses has poured in on me from every corner of the world since the first of the month… Some in America, some in Istanbul, some in Alfortville…

Being left alone with the grief of those who died longing for a homeland they could never reach adds one more heavy weight to what remains of our lives.

Those still living know this…

It is 2026. The 111th year of the Cutting. 111.

Because it carries legal consequences, there is a famous word that makes your mind reel the moment you hear it. I will write this piece by deliberate choice, without using it.

Our elders, even recounting the most ordinary event, would begin, "Before the Cutting." "After the Cutting." It was their own calendar, their own zero point...

I, too, have chosen this word today, to speak of a century of our pain.

Well? Does it relieve you, that this word carries no legal consequence?

The word "the Cutting" binds you to nothing, does it?

Neither your conscience stirs nor your shame, does it? No apology, no compensation!

Did you just say, "Phew"?

You do seem quite relieved…

You won't pay compensation.

You won't return the property you seized.

The Armenian women you abducted — they are gone now, anyway…

Will you breathe another sigh of relief?

Everything is behind you now, over and done, and you think you've escaped punishment, don't you?

Well, here's a question for you.

What do you think punishment is?

Aren't the millions of dollars you've paid for a century, simply to keep that word from being spoken in the parliaments of other countries, a punishment?

Aren't the sums you've paid for books denying this crime against humanity — committed before the eyes of the world — written by people with no standing whatsoever in academic circles, a punishment?

Isn't the darkness that has settled over the soul of this country — a country you turned, over the long run, into a haven for unsolved murders, through the lies you told and the slander you cast to smear the victims' innocence, all to cover up the dirty work of Enver, Talat, and their accomplices — a punishment too?

Isn't the pain and shame felt today, especially by granddaughters who come to realize that the grandmother behind the sentence "My grandmother, a devout Muslim, was also Armenian" had, in most cases, been forcibly abducted and held by the very people who massacred her family, and that what their grandfathers did in taking her as a second or third wife was in fact rape, a punishment too?

Can't you see punishment everywhere? In the land that turned to desert after your Armenian neighbors were gone, in the withered vineyards, in the dried-up fountains — punishment!

Punishment, in the mournful, resentful silence that today covers a land, and its mountains, once made to resound with dances performed to songs and folk tunes!

Did you think there was crime, but no punishment?

You were sorely mistaken!

When you slandered and defiled innocence, you failed to grasp that the price would be paid, unfortunately, across generations — as psychological collapse, emotional darkness, and social decay.

To those who look, again and again, in bewilderment at the ever-growing scale of violence in a society that "turns babies into killers,"

and keep asking, "When did we come to this?" — I have something to say:

We came to this in the knots of injustice tied around the unpunished atrocities and suffering inflicted in 1894-1896, 1909, 1915, 1938, 1942, 1955, 1992, and countless other dates I cannot even list!

We came to this in the slander cast upon the victims, as if the impunity and denial that followed the plunder, rape, and murder weren't enough!

We came to this when we declared killers, plunderers, and rapists heroes!

We came to this when we refused even to honor the memory of innocent victims!

When a society fails to build, and to make functional, justice mechanisms capable of punishing crimes whose perpetrators are known to everyone at all times, the whole of that society, sadly, ends up paying the price…

How do you think perpetrators who have gone unpunished for nearly a hundred and fifty years raised their children? What do you think they taught their grandchildren?

Loyalty?

To earn through labor, and respect hard work?

Not to covet a neighbor's property, wife, or life?

To be honest, not to lie?

The punishment for impunity turned out to be far heavier… You never realized it…

I called it the month of mourning at the start of this piece.

The month of my dear brother İsa, and of our Sevag.

April 1 was their birthday.

On the birthdays of those no longer among us, that very day becomes, for those left behind, a day of mourning...

Sevag (Balıkçı) was killed on April 24, 2011, while performing his military service.

In this country, sometimes you are chosen to be killed.

On the ninety-sixth anniversary of the mourning we hold for our dead who have no graves, to intimidate us, to carry out their vile design, they chose as their victim the most innocent, the most beautiful, the most gifted child in the world.

What they failed to grasp is that the cries of those innocent souls demanding justice continue, and will go on, echoing through mountains and stones, earth and sky! Our Sevag has now joined them…

I remember them all again, may they rest in peace…

*The 1909 Adana Massacre: Three Reports

With a foreword by Taner Akçam

Compiled by Ari Şekeryan

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