Call Against Foreign Intervention at UC Berkeley

All-Armenian Student Association’s Call Against Foreign Intervention at UC Berkeley

The All-Armenian Student Association condemns in the strongest possible terms the brazen attempt by the Azerbaijani government to silence Armenian voices and censor the screening of My Sweet Land on the UC Berkeley campus.

A day prior to the April 24, 2025, event, the Human Rights Center at the UC Berkeley School of Law canceled the screening of a film centered around a young boy living in Nagorno-Karabakh until he was forcibly displaced in 2023.

Boasting on social media, three Azerbaijani citizens attending Berkeley Law were plastered on state-sanctioned Azerbaijani news networks, taking credit for “thwarting an attempt by Armenians to organize another provocation” and bringing about the cancellation. A since-leaked email sent from the Azerbaijani consulate a few days prior to the screening further urges the university to cancel the event. Though UC Berkeley has since attributed the cancellation to staffing shortages, they have failed to confront the implications of foreign interference on their campus.

A foreign dictatorship has no place dictating what is shown, said, or shared at an American University. This overt attempt by a foreign power to suppress student programming at a leading American public university is both unacceptable and alarming. To indefinitely postpone the screening—and only later reschedule it—was a grave miscalculation for the UC Berkeley campus, for it is another example of authoritarian overreach crossing our borders and undermining the principles of free expression and academic integrity in American institutions. 

Moreover, the Azerbaijani citizens in question at Berkeley Law have requested to host an event encouraging “constructive dialogue” about the film, but it is not “dialogue” when students act as agents of a foreign dictatorship to silence their American peers. It is censorship in the clearest of terms and has no place in a university claiming to be a sanctuary for independent thought and resistance to oppression.

To the Azerbaijani consulate and those within our nation’s academic institutions who echo its agenda: you have shown your demagogic face and failed again to silence us. You will never rewrite our history. You will not intimidate our community. Your oil money cannot cover up genocide or ethnic cleansing. The arrogant attempt of the consulate to erase the stories, suffering, and truth of the Armenian people will not succeed.

Every American student, Armenian or otherwise, has the right to confront their history, voice their truth, and challenge power without the fear of coercive intimidation or foreign interference. The My Sweet Land screening at the university has been rescheduled to September 18, 2025. It will be shown, and Armenian voices will not be silenced. 

- All-Armenian Student Association