UK Royal Orchestra conductor to walk 1000 km in Genocide victims footsteps

PanARMENIAN.Net - Conductor of Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Vartan Melkonian and his daughter Veronica will walk 1,000 kilometers from Turkey to Lebanon in the footsteps of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, Al Monitor reports.

A century ago, his ancestors lived in Mus, eastern Turkey, until the day Ottoman rulers made a decision to “deport” Armenians.

Melkonian and his daughter will be in Turkey in February for their “Walking for Armenia” project — a 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) march they plan to start in Van, eastern Turkey, and complete at the Birds’ Nest Orphanage in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where he was sent at the age of 4.

The Syrian stretch of the route poses a serious risk for the Melkonians, and so does anxiety over the assassination of Agos editor-in-chief Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007 and the 2008 murder of [Italian activist] Pippa Bacca, but they are determined to walk it.

“I think that all peoples, everybody, should be prepared for such projects. This project will be a modest and graceful way to remember our loved ones.

Just as the good things your family could have done in the past doesn’t make you a good person, the bad things they could have done doesn’t make you a bad one. But the denial of historic facts is something to have a negative impact on you and torment your soul,” Melkonian said in an interview to Radikal.