Thousands Protest Killing of Armenians

Several thousand Armenians poured into the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to protest the killings of Soviet Armenians and to demand that a mountainous piece of their former homeland be returned to them.

They marched to City Hall, where teen-age boys ran along the stone steps and jumped on a fountain to see who could wave the large Armenian flags the highest. Loudspeakers, the size of filing cabinets, sent the sound of patriotic songs and an afternoon of speeches by Armenian church, political and civic leaders drifting down side streets.

“We are not going to sleep until the people of Karabakh sleep in peace,” vowed one of the speakers, the Rev. Berj Djambazian of the Armenian Congregational Church, to rousing cheers. “We won’t smile until the people in Karabakh get their smile back.”

Karabakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, is an Armenian enclave in the Muslim-dominated Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. For decades, Armenians from around the world have bitterly complained, without success, that the land should be reunited with the nearby Soviet republic of Armenia.

Bloody Retaliation

Last month, up to 1 million Armenians decided to test the limits of the Soviet government’s policy of glasnost , or openness, by once again renewing their crusade. But the weeklong series of peaceful protests in the Armenian capital city of Yerevan touched off a bloody retaliation in the city of Sumgait in the Muslim republic.

Both areas are closed to the Western press, but eyewitnesses and the U.S. government have placed the death toll anywhere from 100 to 600 people.

The Los Angeles protest march, prompted by the deaths, was organized in only a week’s time. But no one seemed surprised that such a large gathering of Armenians, who are known for their strong ethnic ties, showed up on such short notice.

The police provided differing estimates of the crowd, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000.

“There is a oneness about Armenians, more than non-Armenians can imagine,” said Ani Keshishian, associate editor of the Armenian Observer. She added that Soviet Armenians will learn quickly about the demonstration because so many California Armenians regularly talk by telephone with their relatives in their homeland.

Apo Boghigian, editor of Asbarez, a bilingual Armenian newspaper, said Communist Party leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev also will soon know of this demonstration and others being staged in Fresno, New York City, Canada, France, the Middle East, South America and elsewhere.

‘Sensitive to Their Image’

“Gorbachev and the Politburo are very sensitive to their image in the West. They will take into consideration this solidarity in the West,” Boghigian said.

Others speaking to the crowd on Saturday included Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky and Harold Ezell, Western regional commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“This is an incredible demonstration of solidarity. I’m pleased to join in this fight for justice,” said Yaroslavsky, who told the crowd that the City Council approved a resolution Friday asking the Soviet Union to unite Nagorno-Karabakh with the Armenia republic.

Ezell observed that “only in America can we have such a beautiful, peaceful demonstration and a call for justice throughout the world.” The INS commissioner said the protest was especially appropriate in a state where the governor is Armenian, a remark that probably got the most applause of the day.

The Armenian march, which started in Pershing Square and wound past the Latino shopping district on Broadway and through Skid Row, seemed to leave a lot of bystanders puzzled. Most of the protesters spoke Armenian and many of the protest signs merely said “Karabakh to Armenia.”