Will Hadrian is a young Canadian civil servant who is of part Armenian origins. A couple of years ago, his first trip outside of North America was to Armenia, where he participated in an internship program and worked with the Armenian Young Lawyers Association, a group that focuses on addressing corruption in the region and on strengthening civil participation and democratic discourse in Armenian society.
Mr. Hadrian shares his experiences in Armenia and discusses some of the domestic and foreign policy challenges faced by this country in the Caucasus, as well as how the Ramil Safarov affair from a few years ago impacted the way young Armenians saw Hungary. Our readers will probably recall the Safarov affair. This was when an officer of the Azerbaijani army murdered Armenian Lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan in Hungary. Hungarian authorities first jailed the perpetrator, only to release him to Azerbaijan, where he was immediately freed and celebrated as a hero. Hungary’s decision to free Ramil Safarov was a calculated move, forming part of the Orbán government’s pro-Eastern foreign policy of strengthening relations with authoritarian regimes in Central Asia and specifically with oil-rich countries like Azerbaijan.
In this video interview with the Hungarian Free Press, Mr. Hadrian also speaks about the legacy of the Soviet Union and the way that Armenians negotiate their past and the symbols of that Soviet past in the twenty-first century.
