Why acknowledging the Armenian genocide is a big deal for 100 Hongkongers
Armenians in Hong Kong - successors to the likes of Sir Paul Chater - and those elsewhere can tell you in detail what befell their families 101 years ago, and welcome German legislators’ vote to describe what happened as genocide
Henri Arslanian’s maternal grandfather was a terrified three-year-old when he rolled himself inside a carpet to hide from the Turkish soldiers approaching his orphanage.
It was the early summer of 1915, and the trembling Armenian child had already witnessed the death of his mother and one-year-old sister. They had been abandoned, naked, at the side of the road to die of typhoid during one of the Turkish Ottoman empire’s infamous death marches; human convoys forced by the Turks into the blistering heat of the Syrian desert with no food or water. Young Hagop Djoukhadjian had survived by eating grass and drinking from muddy puddles. He had no wish to see any more Turkish soldiers.
“Every Armenian you meet will have a similar story. Many crossed the border into Syria and many went all over the world,” says Arslanian, a lawyer and banker who was born in Montreal, Canada, but lives and works in Hong Kong as a financial technology entrepreneur. He is also the first president of the Armenian Community of China. The mass extermination of the Armenian population in the Anatolia region of eastern Turkey still resonates in Hong Kong, 101 years later. And last month, the Armenian people were thrust into the international spotlight when the German parliament passed a controversial resolution condemning the 1.5 million deaths that occurred in 1915-16 as genocide.
Armenian ‘genocide’ term adopted by German MPs, prompting fierce backlash from Turkey
The news caused a major diplomatic rift with Turkey, but, says Arslanian, it was “very important to Armenians. The Germans placed their morality above all else.”
ARSLANIAN IS ONE OF about 100 Armenians living in Hong Kong, a new generation of professionals and entrepreneurs belonging to a diaspora in China that dates back to the 15th century.