12/03/2024
The Silencing of an Indigenous Child
By Taline Satamian
We, in the West, say that we must allow children to have a voice and to be heard; that we must protect and value them.
Yet, we hardly flinch at the silencing and endangering of children when powerful and rich geopolitical forces are at work. More often than not, their victims are indigenous children in places such as the Middle East and the Caucasus where colonial projects are violently current.
Eleven-year-old Vrej is caught in this web of heartless political manipulations. His story is captured by Jordanian-Armenian filmmaker, Sareen Hairabedian, in her documentary, “My Sweet Land.”
This highly acclaimed and must-see documentary just completed a week-long qualifying run for the Oscars in the Documentary Feature category in Los Angeles.
Under diplomatic pressure from autocratic and oil-rich Azerbaijan whose genocidal military offensive in 2023 forced Vrej, his family, and the remaining 120,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh off their ancestral lands, Jordan dropped “My Sweet Land” in November as its official entry in the category of Best International Feature Film in the Oscars.
This blatant act of censorship and diplomatic maneuvering is part of Azerbaijan’s efforts to cover the traces of its genocide of Artsakh or Nagorno Karabakh Armenians, which started as an offensive and the capture of large swaths of Armenian ancestral lands in 2020, progressing into a 9-months-long food, fuel, and energy blockade of the civilian population, and ending in Novermber 2023 with the full expulsion of the indigenous Armenians from Artsakh.
In an interview with Variety, Hairabedian states, “...this is the silencing of a story that, at its core, is the human story of a boy trying to live his life without the threat of war and conflict. And to position this within the context of political gains or battles, or diplomatic affairs, is extremely unfortunate. And it’s extremely sad for us because this means that censorship and silencing can win.”
Azerbaijan was shaped in the 1920s and nurtured by the Soviets, particularly Stalin, as part of their nationalities policies that largely benefited Moscow and that saw the transfer of various Armenian indigenous lands to the newly formed Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, independent, yet autocratic Azerbaijan, enriched by its fossil fuel resources that Europe, Turkey, and Israel have come to rely on, consolidated its hold of Armenian indigenous lands by eventually expelling the last of the Armenians that had remained on their ancestral lands.
Vrej and millions of other children worldwide whose stories are silenced for political expediency are, in fact, abandoned by humanity and left to their own and their weakened people’s devices as they struggle to survive. We leave them at the mercy of corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry regional and world leaders whose inhumane actions DO indeed trickle down, inflicting gaping and open wounds upon young minds and souls that will be hard to heal.
We say we stand for the rights of children, but it seems that the silencing and endangering of indigenous children impacted by colonial projects is a different matter. Will we continue to abandon them?
