Gevork Achemyan – Co-Founder Of ASALA

Gevork Achemyan (Kevork Adzhemyan or Ajemian) (1932-1998) was an Armenian writer, publicist, and social and political figure. He was a co-founder of the military organization ASALA.

Born in Syria into a family of Armenian refugees, Achemyan at an early age moved to Beirut. He studied at the American University of Beirut. Under the university, he at some point opened a bookstore.

Achemyan was a prominent representative of the new literary trend of foreign Armenian prose of the 1960s. He wrote in Armenian and English and published in Lebanon, the USSR, and the USA. Story tension and crude realism were inherent to the artistic style of Achemyan.

Gevork Achemyan participated in the establishment of ASALA. In particular, he developed the political line of the organization. Achemyan was additionally a member of the organizing committee of the First Armenian Congress (Paris, 1979).

One of Achemyan’s most famous novels is “Hardagoghi zharangordnery”. This novel tells about the life of Armenian youth in Lebanon in the 1970s. Among other works of Achemyan were “Will we someday remember Western Armenia?” (Beirut, 1998), “Ruling over the Ruins” (the US, 1999), and “A Time for Terror” (the US, 2000).

In 1978-1989, Achemyan was the editor of Spyurk magazine. From the pages of Spyurk, he advocated political prisoner Gurgen Yanikyan and the rights of Armenians to return to Western Armenia. Even before the start of the Karabakh movement, he had addressed the problems of the Armenian population of Karabakh and Nakhichevan.

Achemyan passed away in Paris, France, in 1998. In 1999, the best journalistic works of Achemyan were published.