Samantha Power landed in Yerevan on Monday — the first time a sitting USAID Administrator visited Armenia. As it happened, I was with her the first time she ever visited Armenia. It was 2018, she was a private citizen, and we were both attending a human rights conference and awards ceremony.
Prominent Armenians had established the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative as a living memory to the 1915 Armenian genocide. The initiative bestows an award to an unsung human rights defender, linking the tragedy of the Armenian genocide to the modern day defense of human rights. The year we attended, a Rohingya human rights lawyer Kyaw Hla Aung received the award. Samantha Power served on the award selection committee, which is fitting because her Pulitzer Prize winning book A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide opens with the story of the Armenian genocide — and the world’s indifference to it.
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From Yerevan this week, Samantha Power acknowledged this history. “I know this crisis is particularly painful given how the world has failed to protect Armenians in the past,” she said during a press conference in Yerevan. “This morning, I visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial and laid a wreath at the eternal flame. Not only to honor the memory of those killed and forced from their homes more than a century ago, but to remember our shared duty to stand up for one another’s safety, dignity, and cultural heritage.”
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