U.S. Policy Stamped In Blood

[Aratta-Kingdom]

U.S. policy stamped in blood

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008...-stamped-blood/

Pamela Barsam Brown

Saturday, April 19, 2008

 

 

With Tibetan, Burmese and Darfurian cultural, religious, and human rights in the news, it is appropriate to extend the discussion to the political expedient travesty of United States foreign policy on the Armenian Genocide.In April 2006, I encountered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an Alexandria, VA restaurant. I approached Dr. Rice who was accompanied by First Lady Laura Bush and a secret service cadre. As I shook her hand, I broached the subject of genocide by commenting on my family’s support of action in Darfur. She replied, “I have been there.” Moving to the topic of the Armenian Genocide, I told her I was in Washington to urge my congressional delegation’s support of a reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide — a horrific event every American Armenian connects to. She simply stared back at me - and, without further comment, departed.

 

This February, I was again in Washington to promote Genocide reaffirmation. I met with first-term Colorado Congressman, Doug Lamborn. Mr. Lamborn, a former Colorado State Representative, had cosponsored a state resolution supporting Genocide recognition. As CO District 5 Representative, he cosponsored H. Res.106 in February 2007. However, that October, he withdrew his name. I wanted to know why!

 

During my meeting with Representative Lamborn, he told me he had rejected multiple State Department attempts to persuade him to withdraw from H. Res.106 because he understood the historical facts of the event. The turn came with an unsolicited call from General David Petraeus. He told Representative Lamborn that his support of the Armenian Genocide resolution threatened the safety of our troops in Iraq because of Turkey’s view of this sensitive political issue.

 

When I heard Mr. Lamborn’s explanation, I was stunned. All I could think was how could this happen in America — a country once viewed around the world as a beacon of moral justice. That America had actively and officially assisted my great grandmother sue the Ottoman Empire for its government directed murder of her husband. My great grandfather was an American educated medical doctor, ordained minister, and naturalized American citizen who was murdered by Turkish gendarmes in his home town of Turkey. In 1897, the U.S. Consulate in Sivas completed its investigation of his murder and provided an official recounting to the U.S. State Department and my great grandmother.

 

This present-day official Genocide denial policy is a legacy initiated by President George Herbert Walker Bush. The slippery slope was strengthened and reaffirmed by President William Jefferson Clinton who personally intervened to subvert passage of a House Genocide reaffirmation resolution. President George Walker Bush has grown genocide denial into an Administration-wide policy, aided by the compliance of our 110th Congress. As my own experience confirms, President Bush’s denial zeal has permeated into every pore of government — even reaching into the highest levels of our traditionally non-partisan military command. Another consequence of his proactive denial is the currently diminished Administration-proposed financial support package for the blockaded Republic of Armenia.

 

While both parties have been complicit in denigrating the first Genocide of the 20th Century, a change of course could come with our 2008 Presidential election. Senators Clinton and Obama have pledged to reaffirm the Armenian Genocide (Senator McCain would presumably maintain the current policy of denial).

 

From just this one perspective of honoring and acting on the rights of humanity, It is certainly TIME FOR CHANGE!

 

Pamela Barsam Brown is a resident of Boulder.

 

 

[Sip]

I can't comprehend why it is so difficult for some to see past their own self-interests and realize that in the big picture, it makes absolutely no sense for the US to deliberately try to piss off Turkey. This is not to say that Condoleezza is not a dumb ass ... but at least in this case I think the US is fairly justified in pushing the microscopic Armenian issue (in the current global scale) under the carpet.

[garmag]

 

Pamela Barsam Brown is a resident of Boulder.

 

It is hoped that USA does not actively undermine the existance of Armenian Republic! apart from the US recognition of AG, which in itself is not a guarentee for Armenia's well being...Will they leave us to be?

 

The recent threats of US rep. Mathew Bryza, about cutting the funding from the millenium projects... leaves one to wonder if, Armenians or Armenia count for anything in the US policies regarding the US new world order?

 

Unless Armenia unilaterally becomes subservient to the Western interests, as a few political declarations recently made in EU as well as USA pointed... to the detriment of RF...it seems to me, we have to counter this new front, in addition to the blockage we face presently.

 

So far a civil strife has been avoided...The destruction of Armenia from within is a great possibility. At least that's what was aimed for during the recent presidential elections.

Our choice is very evident, Armenia and Diaspora Armenians more then ever, need to unify all efforts for our survival!

 

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

garmag, we already spok about bryza and we know he doesn't represent the american interests in armenia. bryza is someone who must be removed from the office. with his pro-azeri, pro-turkish and anti-armenian position he has gone too far.

 

read the second article:

 

http

://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=18...p;#entry241021

 

 

 

http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=17774

Edited April 19, 2008 by Aratta-Kingdom

[garmag]

garmag, we already spok about bryza and we know he doesn't represent the american interests in armenia. bryza is someone who must be removed from the office. with his pro-azeri, pro-turkish and anti-armenian position he has gone too far.

 

Hi Aratta,

I had read the articles...

I was also referring to the EU human rights rep's utterings...

Armenia is portrayed as a vile dictatorship to be chastised and warned that she might lose voting priviledges in EU forums?

 

Thanks for all the informative postings...

 

 

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

Hi Aratta,

I had read the articles...

I was also referring to the EU human rights rep's utterings...

Armenia is portrayed as a vile dictatorship to be chastised and warned that she might lose voting priviledges in EU forums?

 

Thanks for all the informative postings...

 

I don't think it will ever happen. U.S. and E.U. need Armenia. With all the nonsense in Strasburg and Bryza's trash talk, they simply wanna show that we are here and we are watching you. They truly are disappointe because the color revolution in Armenian has failed. E.U. and U.S. can't afford to lose Armenia. What happened at the U.N. was not an accident either. azerbaijan does not have a power to bring any issue to U.N. for a vote in such a short time. The Artsax issue, including the recognition of the Armeian Genocide by the U.S. is a card which they hope to use against Armenia and Russia.

[Aratta-Kingdom]

The citizens of the United States have a right to present their demands to the government, -and the government is obligated to listen to its citizens:

 

 

 

Watertown center helps survivors tell their stories to following generations

 

The Boston Globe

 

By Erica Noonan

Globe Staff / April 20, 2008

 

 

WATERTOWN - The way survivors see it, the tragedy of genocide is magnified when the history remains untold. If more had been done to recognize the Armenian genocide, which killed the family of 98-year-old Asdghig Alemian, perhaps Edgar Krasa, 87, would have been spared the horrors of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Had the history been better remembered, they believe, there's a chance that 21-year-old Marie Carine Gakuba would not have had to suffer through an ugly chapter of her own national history - the Rwandan genocide.

 

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Alemian, Krasa, and Gakuba were brought together last Sunday to share their stories of survival. The program, called "Genocide Committed, Genocide Denied, and Genocide Repeated," was hosted by the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, North America's only permanent memorial to the Armenian genocide.

 

Krasa and Gakuba are sad witnesses to what happens when history is ignored and forgotten, say the descendents of the first genocide of the 20th century, in which more than 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of Turkish soldiers between 1915 and 1917.

 

"The question we are always asking ourselves is, 'What can I do personally so that genocide never happens again to anyone?' " said Mariam Stepanyan, the 32-year-old director of the Armenian Library.

 

Armenians "carry the memory of loss in their hearts," she said.

 

With only a handful of the Armenian genocide survivors still alive, the responsibility for keeping that memory alive has fallen squarely on the shoulders of Generation X. Stepanyan is among a small group of 30- and 40-something Armenian-Americans at the core of a burgeoning local genocide-awareness movement, one that has united them with victims of the Nazi Holocaust, their descendants, and survivors of more recent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.

 

Armenians have lived longest with the heavy cultural and moral obligation to prevent genocide. The almost missionary zeal to educate the public about the massacre is an unshakable part of their cultural identity, said Ara Nazarian, a 36-year-old researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

 

"We are an ancient people and this is a fresh wound because it is only 93 years old," said Nazarian, who as a teenager growing up in Iran helped collect oral histories of the survival stories of his elderly Armenian neighbors.

 

"It doesn't define everything about being Armenian, but it's ingrained. These are stories told at the most personal levels by your grandma, and it is a human link that you can't forget," he said.

 

Young Armenian activists are the new faces pushing forward a decades-old effort to get the US government to officially acknowledge the massacre as a genocide, and also to seek an apology and reparations from the Turkish government.

 

They are also increasingly reaching beyond their own cultural group to join forces with people like 52-year-old Jewish community organizer Susie Davidson, who pulled together last Sunday's program with Alemian, Krasa, and Gakuba.

 

more stories like this"Reaching out to others alleviates the feeling of suffering and aloneness. It's a natural emotional progression to empathize with other victims of genocide," said Davidson, who became interested in forming intercultural alliances with Armenians after meeting some last year at a "Dream for Darfur" rally at Boston City Hall. The event brought together a mix of genocide survivors to raise attention to the ongoing massacre of an estimated 500,000 people in western Sudan.

 

"There is a certain strength to be realized from coming together," said Davidson, author of "I Refused to Die," a collection of stories from Boston-area Nazi Holocaust survivors. "The experience is similar, and this can only lead to strength in numbers."

 

Armenians are eager to collaborate because they hope the suffering of their ancestors can make a difference for the future, said Stepanyan.

 

Sharistan Melkonian, 39, who works for the Armenian National Committee of Massachusetts, said she feels efforts among the next wave of next-generation Armenian activists are beginning to bear fruit, citing a bruising, high-profile philosophical battle last year with the Anti-Defamation League over the national Jewish group's refusal to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.

 

More than a dozen local communities dumped the Anti-Defamation League's "No Place for Hate" antiprejudice program in protest of the organization's reticence, and earlier this month the Massachusetts Municipal Association broke off its sponsorship of the program.

 

"I do feel like we are making a difference," said Melkonian.

 

Beth Israel's Nazarian said he hopes he can raise his own infant son in a country that has learned lessons from Armenia's painful history.

 

"I'm hopeful that when he's old enough to understand we won't still be fighting for recognition," he said. "I can teach him about the history and culture, and any time he sees injustice - especially of such magnitude - he needs to do something about it."

 

One of the few Armenian survivors healthy enough to attend the gathering on Sunday, Alemian was orphaned as a small child. Frail and wheelchair-bound, her voice ringing with anguish, she showed the crowd of more than 100 people a photograph of her late parents - the only way she has to remember their faces.

 

Krasa, a Czech Jew, was imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp by German Nazis, who exterminated an estimated 6 million Jews between 1937 and 1945.

 

He survived the camp, but more than 90,000 Jews died there.

 

"Everybody says, 'Never again,' but we see how power-hungry men can start a genocide," said Krasa, referring to post-World War II genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Africa.

 

Gakuba was only 8 when her family was chased into hiding during the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 Rwandans were murdered over a 100-day period.

 

She watched armed men shoot her 12-year-old brother to death while she and her siblings huddled for safety in a swamp.

 

Now studying political science at the University of New Hampshire, she speaks about her experiences at genocide-awareness events.

 

As a child, Gakuba believed the horror around her "was happening all over the world, that's why nothing was being done to stop it. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I found it wasn't," she said ruefully.

 

As an adult, she is more sober and cynical about the cruelty she witnessed, and about the world's indifference.

 

"I guess I am hopeful. I am crossing my fingers that something might get done. But if nobody is going to do something to stop [genocide], they should stop saying they will," said Gakuba.

 

"It gives people a false sense of security."

 

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

ON EVE OF GENOCIDE ANNIVERSARY, IT IS TIME FOR CONGRESS TO ACT

 

Yerkir

22.04.2008 14:17

 

Yerevan (Yerkir) - It is far past time when the United States Congress

should go on record officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide. As a

State Senator, with the help of Governor George Deukmejian, I authored

the first resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, which passed

the California Legislature.

 

In Congress, George Radanovich, Jim Rogan and myself, along with

bipartisan support, were able to successfully pass the first Armenian

Genocide Resolution through the foreign affairs committee. Later,

Adam Schiff, with the support of myself and others, was able to do

the same. But, regardless of whether the President was Bill Clinton

or George Bush, and whether the Speaker was Dennis Hastert or Nancy

Pelosi, the impact of the Government of Turkey's protests has had the

same effect. The Genocide Resolution, which we have passed through

the Foreign Affairs Committee, has consistently been checkmated by

the Government of Turkey. The reason the Government of Turkey can't be

allowed to halt passage of this resolution is because of the gravity

of the subject of genocide.

 

On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire set out on a campaign to

exterminate the Armenian people. Between 1915 and 1923, the numbers

were horrific. One and a half million Armenians were murdered and

500,000 deported from their homelands. At the end of these eight years,

the Armenian population of Anatolia and Western Armenia was virtually

eliminated, becoming one of the 20th Century's darkest chapters.

 

While acknowledging the role played by the Ottoman Empire in killing

Armenians, some have laid doubt to the claim of genocide, citing the

subsequent deportation of the survivors as merely a movement of a

people from one land to another. Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador

to the Ottoman Empire from 1913-1916, saw it much differently. In his

memoirs, Morgenthau recalls that the Turks, "never had the slightest

idea of reestablishing the Armenians in (a) new country" knowing

that "the great majority of those would...either die of thirst and

starvation, or be murdered by the wild Mohammedan desert tribes."

 

I recall Morgenthau's words here because he saw first hand the

atrocities wrought on the Armenians, and he had been told by Turks

that they understood quite well that they had handed down a death

sentence to the Armenian people. The Turks not only knew of what

they were doing, but spoke quite freely of it. Eighty years later,

however, many are still unwilling to recognize the killing for what

it was: genocide.

 

The U.S. has long been a global leader in promoting human rights

around the world. On the issue of the Armenian genocide, however,

we lag behind. The French, Swiss, Swedish, Germans, and even the

Russian governments recognize the Armenian genocide properly. As a

global leader in human rights, it is imperative for the U.S. to stand

on principle and recognize the annihilation of the Armenians.

 

However, it is no less important today to recognize the Armenian

genocide for what it is. The deafening silence that came in its

wake set the stage for a century that saw genocides occur in Europe,

Africa, and Asia. While the Armenian genocide was the first of the

20th century, the blind eye cast to the slaughter of Armenians

was a point used by Hitler who asked his joint chiefs of staff,

"Who...speaks today of the [their] annihilation?"

 

To the critics who say that we should not dwell on history,

I say it's much harder to get tomorrow right if we get yesterday

wrong. The world's strength to oppose killing today is made greater

by accountability, for actions present, but also past. It's weakened

by denial of accountability of past acts. Not recognizing the Armenian

genocide, as such, does just that.

 

Rep. Ed Royce is a Republican from California. He is the Ranking

Member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Terrorism Subcommittee

and is a senior member of the Armenia Caucus.

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

WALK FOR GENOCIDE AWARENESS

By Daniel Tedford

 

Daily Pilot

http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2008/04...ocide042108.txt

April 21 2008

CA

 

The Rev. Fr. Moushegh Tashjian, the pastor at St. Mary Armenian

Apostolic Church, has been waiting a long time for the U.S. government

to give him what he wants.

 

Tashjian's father was orphaned when Tashjian's grandmother was

killed during the Armenian Genocide, which began April 24, 1915. And

since he first learned of the tragedy he has wanted justice from

the U.S. government -- something he thinks is found in the simple

acknowledgment of what took place early in the 20th century.

 

"There are millions of Americans that sympathize with us, but it is the

government that stubbornly is standing with the [Turkish government]

on this issue," Tashjian said. "It's not a hopeless thing we are

pursuing."

 

Tashjian and many others in the Armenian community took to the streets

of Costa Mesa and Santa Ana for an Armenian Genocide awareness walk

starting at 1 p.m. Sunday. More than 250 people walked from St. Mary

Armenian Church to Forty Martyrs Armenian Church in Santa Ana, an

8-mile walk. Congressman Edward Royce spoke briefly to begin the

event while Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez meet the group at Forty

Martyrs for the closing ceremonies.

 

"Our efforts here begin with the children," Royce said of the large

amount of youths who turned out for the walk. "We have to remind them

of their heritage."

 

Royce has worked on legislation concerning the Armenian Genocide and

spoke out against the refusals of both President George W. Bush and

former President Bill Clinton to acknowledge the atrocities documented

since 1915.

 

Ara Malazian, one of the organizers of the event from the Armenian

National Committee of Orange County, reiterated the congressman's

thoughts by describing how vast the genocide has affected the Armenian

people.

 

"Talk to any Armenian here, every one of us has been touched in

some way," said Malazian, whose grandfather escaped the country at

5 years old.

 

"We are looking at the Armenian Genocide as the first crime against

humanity in the 20th century."

 

The event was free to anyone who wanted to register and walk, but

the Armenian National Committee did ask for donations it would use

toward generating educational opportunities, Malazian said.

 

Those educational benefits would go to educating teachers on how to

teach students about the Armenian Genocide in schools and raising

awareness in the public, Malazian said.

 

"[The youth] will be the torch bearers for justice," Tashjian

said. "There is hope."

 

This was the second awareness walk the group has put on in Orange

County.

 

Last year's walk generated $15,000 in donations and the organization

was hoping for more of the same this year, Malazian said.

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE REMEMBERED

By Lisa D. Welsh

 

Worcester Telegram

http://www.telegram.com/article/20080421/N...600/1008/NEWS02

April 21 2008

MA

 

Importance of repeating stories stressed

 

Photo: During the Martyrs' Day commemoration at the Armenian Church of

Our Saviour yesterday, 7-year-old Emilee Derkazarian of Holden lights

a candle in memory of her relative Charles Derkazarian, who was killed

during the Armenian genocide.

 

Photo: Heghine Minassian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, pauses

as she relates her experiences.

 

WORCESTER-- Three generations of Armenians -- a 99-year-old woman, a

three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a high school essayist

-- spoke from differing perspectives but shared one message during

the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian genocide recognition yesterday

at the Armenian Church of Our Saviour: "Honor the truth of the past

because denial makes it more likely that genocide will happen again."

 

Heghine Minassian was 6 years old the day Turkish soldiers went house

to house and emptied all the buildings in her village. She said most

Armenians were marched into the desert, where they were left to starve

to death; but some of the women, like her aunt, were kept as slaves.

 

"My grandparents were in the attic hiding," Mrs. Minassian said in

Armenian through an English interpreter, Van Aroian. "My grandmother's

sister yelled, 'Don't open the door. Don't go out.' But the (soldiers)

gave the order to come down and they came down."

 

Within three years, Mrs. Minassian would be an orphan, the same age of

many of the children in church who participated in a candle-lighting

ceremony in honor of their family members who had died in the

genocide. Looking out at the young faces in the front pews,

Mrs. Minassian said, "Don't forget our struggle."

 

Stephen A. Kurkjian, a reporter for the Boston Globe for 38 years,

has written about many high-profile events. However, sharing the

story of his father's family was not one of them.

 

"I was not an appreciating Armenian until 1992, when I accompanied my

83-year-old father to the village where he was born," Mr. Kurkjian

said at the Martyrs' Day commemoration. "The sadness hit me like a

sledgehammer. I started asking, 'How could this happen?' "

 

"I came back and wrote an article called 'Roots of Sorrow.' But now

I'd add to that title, 'Seeds of Hope.' "

 

Mr. Kurkjian's father lost his father, brother and sister in the

genocide of 1915; he survived after making the 300-mile trek to Syria

with his mother, and later to America.

 

"My father would say out of tragedy there was opportunity for liberty

and religious freedom. There was education and economic opportunity

in America. I would have never had the successes I've had. Instead

I would have worked at a small weekly in a mountain village."

 

"I asked my Der Hayr (priest), 'How this could happen?' " Mr. Kurkjian

said. "He said, 'God would not have allowed the first Christian

church to not have survived.' That's as good an answer as you are

going to get."

 

With the internal awakening about his heritage, Mr. Kurkjian has

traveled to Turkey and watched pressure build on the Turkish government

to reassess its position that downplays references to the genocide.

 

Robin Garabedian, a junior at Doherty Memorial High School whose

family has been with the Armenian Church of Our Saviour since her

grandmother's family immigrated to Worcester, said she was 7 years

old when her father told her about the genocide. In reading her

award-winning essay, "Why Remembrance of the Genocide is Important,"

she quoted Adolf Hitler as saying, "Who today remembers the

extermination of the Armenians?" as rationalization for the Holocaust.

 

"How does someone hate someone else so much?" Robin asked in

anger. "If the world had stood up (against) the Armenian genocide,

there wouldn't have been genocide of the Jews, or in Cambodia in the

'70s, or in Darfur today."

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

GUEST COMMENTARY: TURKS, AMERICANS LEAVE GENOCIDE BY THE WAYSIDE

By Lisa Kirazian

 

The UCSD Guardian Online

http://ucsdguardian.org/index.php?option=c...32&Itemid=5

April 21 2008

CA

 

Imagine being a 93-year-old man who has been ignored and isolated all

his life. His family and friends are gone. No one looks him in the eye

as he hobbles down the street. No one knows his name or acknowledges

that he even exists. Nobody stops to chat. Everyone rushes right past

him, saying and doing nothing -- for nearly a century.

 

The Armenian Genocide is that lonely old man, still aching to have

his story told, his existence acknowledged, his soul healed and put

to rest.

 

The Armenian Genocide of 1915, commemorated every April 24 by Armenians

around the world, was the systematic destruction by the Ottoman Empire

of more than 1.5 million Armenians. The Ottoman government's desire

at the time to "cleanse" minorities and create a Pan-Turkish state

has been well documented. Records from then-U.S. Ambassador to Ottoman

Turkey Henry Morgenthau, from German missionaries and even from Turkish

officials reveal that the Ottoman Empire was particularly intent on

annihilating the Armenian race, which had become so successful within

the country -- a country with much territory previously belonging to

ancient Armenia.

 

Government archives in Turkey and around the world have proof of

these goals. Yet Turkey still denies that an Armenian Genocide ever

occurred, and many countries still side with Turkey when it claims

that the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians were merely the result of a

variety of World War I skirmishes and Armenian insurgencies impossible

to pin on the government.

 

Fortunately, France, Italy, Switzerland and other enlightened

nations refuse to give into this lie, recently passing resolutions

and legislation acknowledging the Armenian Genocide -- the first

genocide of the twentieth 20th century, one that Adolf Hitler studied

in preparation for his own Jewish Holocaust.

 

Andrew Tarsey, former Director of the Anti-Defense League of New

England, was essentially fired last year for his comments acknowledging

the Armenian Genocide but has inspired Jews and Armenians alike with

his uncompromised integrity on this issue.

 

Momentum is shifting in other ways as well: U.S. House and Senate

Resolution 106 acknowledging the Genocide, New York Life's settlement

of insurance-policy reparations to descendants of Armenian Genocide

victims, more and more countries passing genocide legislation as

mentioned, the Los Angeles Unified School District incorporating

a new Armenian-Genocide curriculum into the schools. These are

important steps.

 

Some Turkish scholars and artists, like historian Taner Akcam of the

University of Minnesota, are now speaking out about the Armenian

Genocide and acknowledging that it did in fact happen -- even

dialoguing with their Armenian counterparts at academic conferences

and panels.

 

Perhaps Turkey does not recognize how much more respect it would gain

worldwide if it did finally admit to the Ottoman Empire's Armenian

Genocide -- perhaps its bid to join the European Union would even be

helped. But Turkey also knows full well that the admission would result

in a doling-out of financial reparations that could nearly bankrupt

the country. So, admitting the truth is too embarrassing and costly.

 

Yet Turkey apparently doesn't mind throwing millions of dollars

at lobbyists and politicians worldwide to secure its anti-Armenian

goals. Neither those efforts, however, nor vehement denial, can change

the truth of history. Sadly, many Turks believe that the Armenian

Genocide is a lie; saddest of all, younger generations of Turks are

entirely ignorant of this period in their country's history.

 

Some would say the aftermath of the genocide has even continued

with a young Turkish nationalist's assassination of beloved

Armenian-Turkish journalist/editor Hrant Dink last year, seemingly

for his pro-Genocide views. His son Arat Dink, assuming leadership

of his father's newspaper, was also convicted (like his father) under

Turkey's Article 301 of the penal code, for the "crime" of insulting

Turkishness. Never mind insulting the truth.

 

Only an enlightened people are brave enough to explore and admit

their mistakes and sins. Only an enlightened people are brave enough

to be persecuted for their beliefs. And Armenians everywhere will

keep fighting until the truth sets the world free.

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

Bush again fails to use term ‘genocide’ in his annual April 24 statement

24.04.

 

 

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ U.S. President George W. Bush issued annual April 24 statement on the Armenian Remembrance Day.

 

The statement reads,

 

“On this day of remembrance, we honor the memory of the victims of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire. I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in commemorating this tragedy and mourning the loss of so many innocent lives.

 

As we reflect on this epic human tragedy, we must resolve to redouble our efforts to promote peace, tolerance, and respect for the dignity of human life. The Armenian people's unalterable determination to triumph over tragedy and flourish is a testament to their strength of character and spirit. We are grateful for the many contributions Americans of Armenian heritage have made to our Nation.

 

We welcome the efforts by individuals in Armenia and Turkey to foster reconciliation and peace, and support joint efforts for an open examination of the past in search of a shared understanding of these tragic events. We look forward to the realization of a fully normalized Armenia-Turkey relationship.

 

The United States is committed to a strong relationship with Armenia based on shared values. We call on the Government of Armenia to take decisive steps to promote democracy, and will continue our support for Armenia to this end. We remain committed to serving as an honest broker in pursuit of a lasting and peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Artsax conflict.

 

On this solemn day of remembrance, Laura and I express our deepest condolences to Armenian people around the world.”

 

[Aratta-Kingdom]

U.S SURRENDERS TO 90-YEAR DENIAL CAMPAIGN BY TURKISH GOVERNMENT

 

PanARMENIAN.Net

29.04.2008

 

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On April 23rd, International Association of Genocide

Scholars (IAGS) and Genocide Watch President, Dr. Greg Stanton,

gave keynote remarks at the Capitol Hill Observance of the Armenian

Genocide, organized by the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues.

 

Citing the House Foreign Affairs Committee passage last year of the

Armenian Genocide resolution, Stanton explained that by postponing

a full House vote, "Again the United States surrendered to the

ninety-year campaign of denial by the government of Turkey. The State

Department and the White House have continued the cowardly policies

of every Secretary of State since Lansing who have considered it

more important to placate the Turkish government than to be truthful

about history."

 

Dr. Stanton went on to explain the eight stages of genocide and

the dangerous cost of genocide denial both to the victims and the

perpetrators. He described the benefits of genocide recognition,

stating that "telling the truth would ultimately be good for

U.S.-Turkish relations, because they would no longer be based on

diplomatic lies." Passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution,

he noted, would also "pay tribute to America's first international

human rights movement. The Foreign Service Officers and prominent

individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau,

and Cleveland Dodge, who did so much to help the Armenians, exemplify

America's legacy of moral leadership, reported the Armenian National

Committee of America (ANCA).