James Karnusian

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Rev. James Karnusian (1926–1998) was a Swiss-Armenian Protestant pastor, writer and public activist. He was born in 1926 in a refugee camp in Beirut, to Armenian genocide survivors from Musa Ler. He studied at universities in Greece and Switzerland and later worked as a Protestant pastor in Saanen, Switzerland. In 1979 he organized the first Armenian World Congress in Paris. In 1983, for the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, he led a Pan-Armenian convention in Lausanne with delegates from 17 countries, saying that recovering Western Armenia was a priority. In 1992 he co-founded the Switzerland-Armenia Association (GSA) with Hans Schellenberg and Alexander Euler. He was allegedly one of the founders of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), along with Hagop Hagopian and Kevork Ajemian.