Prominent British historian confirms Armenian Genocide

[Boghos]

PRESS RELEASE

Armenian Genocide Resource Center

of Northern California (AGRC)

5400 McBryde Avenue

Richmond, California 94805

Tel: (510) 965-0152

fax: (510) 215-0444

Email: AGRC@jps.net

 

Friday, December 14, 2001

 

 

A PROMINENT BRITISH HISTORIAN IN A MAJOR BOOK CONFIRMS THE REALITY OF

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

 

In a book acclaimed by historians as a great scholarly achievement,

British historian Dominic Lieven, in several references, characterizes

the wartime fate of the Armenians as "genocide." A former Kennedy

Scholar at Harvard University, Lieven is presently Professor of History

at the world renowned London School of Economics. The book, bearing the

simple title, Empire, and now in its second edition, is published by

Yale University Press, 2001.

 

In his very incisive analysis of the Ottoman Empire, Professor Lieven

attributes the disintegration of that Empire to the inability of Ottoman

rulers to strike a balance between traditional imperialism and the

xenophobic nationalism of the Young Turks. He cites the factors of the

multi-ethnic structure of the Empire, the Ottoman-Turkish paranoia

resulting from the emancipation of one nationality after another from

Ottoman dominion, and the parallel shrinkage of that Empire, as

responsible for the latter's ultimate demise. Describing the Armenian

Genocide as "incomparable in its scale and horror" he describes it as

"the most extreme" Ottoman response to the fear of losing "the Turks'

sole remaining Anatolian homeland."

 

It is most noteworthy that Professor Lieven, who indicates in his notes

that he has consulted nearly all the works of the deniers of the

genocide, such as Bernard Lewis, Stanford Shaw, Justin McCarthy, gives

explicit credit to Professor Dadrian, Director of Genocide Research at

the Zoryan Institute. He treats Dadrian's major work on the subject,

"The History of the Armenian Genocide", as a principal source for his

conclusion on the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. Even

though he criticizes Dadrian for failing "to put the horrific events of

1915-16 in their context," he acknowledges his pioneering role in

documenting the genocide.

 

As Lieven wrote, "The evidence Dadrian presents from German, Austrian

and Turkish sources in my view leads inescapably to the conclusion that

the extermination of the Armenians was actually planned by a clique

within the Young Turk leadership and executed by the sinister Special

Organization ("Teshkilati Mahsusa") of the army. See in particular his

chapters 11, 14, 19." In the Bibliography Section, Professor Lieven

again points out that Dadrian's treatment of the subject is more legal

than historical, his work "is more a judicial indictment than a work of

history." Nevertheless, "the book's evidence of deliberate genocide

seems to me convincing and its scholarly credentials sound."

 

It should be noted in parenthesis that when discussing the Tsarist

Russian Empire, Professor Lieven describes the Azeri's of today as

follows: "The Turkic Shia Muslim peoples of the Eastern Trans-Caucasus

(who in the twentieth century came to call themselves Azeri's) …

Azerbaijan, which as a nation is a purely twentieth-century and partly

Soviet-creation. By contrast, the Armenians, not unlike the Jews, are an

ancient people whose sense of national identity has been enormously

strengthened by modern memories of genocide" (pp. 213, 394).

 

It is particularly significant that a prominent historian is now on

record as publicly acknowledging the singular value of Professor

Dadrian's contribution on this topic. This is further reinforced by the

equally prominent international law expert Professor W.C. Bassiouni's

recognition of Dadrian's legal analysis of the Armenian Genocide, twice

having seen the light of print in two separate monographs in the Yale

Journal of International Law (1989, 1998), the world's most

distinguished international law journal. In commenting on this legal

analysis, Professor Bassiouni in his book "Crimes Against Humanity in

International Criminal Law," which is also in its second revised

edition, offered the following judgement:

 

"Of all the conflicting and contradictory literature on the subject,

including many Turkish publications, denying, justifying or explaining

what happened, Dadrian's article is the most legally convincing, and

from other accounts, the closest to historical accuracy with such

debated facts."

[hyecory]

Why the Armenian Holocaust must not be airbrushed from history

 

Only a handful of elderly Armenians now exist as witnesses to the modern era's first act of genocide

 

By Robert Fisk

INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER

 

27 November 2000

 

Last week, the British Government said it would refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust. Only a few days earlier, President Clinton pleaded with the US Congress to ignore calls to commemorate the Holocaust because, if they did so, "American lives" would be at risk. Whether the victims of the Holocaust were really killed "because of a deliberate policy of extermination", The Wall Street Journal told us last week, "is a matter of contentious scholarly debate". How David Irving and the Holocaust deniers must be rubbing their hands with delight.

 

But no need to fear. The Holocaust in question was not the Jewish Holocaust but the Armenian Holocaust. The dead amount not to six million but to a mere one and a half million. It's not a resurgent, militarised Germany we are frightened of but a resurgent militarised Turkey. While thousands of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust remain to tell us of their suffering, only a handful of very elderly Armenians now exist as witnesses to the modern era's first act of genocide. The Jewish organisations that rightly remind the world of their people's slaughter, are powerful. The Armenian groups that wish to commemorate their own bloodbath are weak and scattered. Their Holocaust is now to be airbrushed from history.

 

Is there any limit to our gutlessness? Take that letter from the Home Office's "Race Equality Unit" - first revealed in The Independent last week - refusing to acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust at Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. Its author, Neil Frater, told the Armenian Assembly of America that "the massacres [sic] in Armenia, like many other atrocities before the Holocaust and the Nazi era, were brought to our attention in response to last year's consultation exercise", on the memorial day. The dishonesty of this sentence is almost breathtaking. At no point does Mr Frater even say that the Armenians suffered a genocide - let alone a holocaust - and he then lumps this appalling crime against humanity with "many other atrocities before the Nazi era". But no other atrocity before the "Nazi era" comes anywhere close to the extermination of the Armenians.

 

And note that happy-clappy phrase "consultation exercise". How typical of the Blair government to have a "consultation exercise" to decide which ethnic group would have the privilege of having its suffering memorialised and which would be ruthlessly excised from the history books. "The massacres

 

of 1915-16 were an appalling tragedy condemned by the British government of the day," Mr Frater tells the Armenians. But he fails to add that the "British government of the day" produced a 677-page book - the Bryce Report for the Foreign Office - whose meticulous testimony and eye-witness accounts of Turkish mass-slaughter, organised rape and ethnic cleansing persuaded that same government to demand war-crime trials for the Turks.

 

Now let's turn to those meretricious - nay, outrageous - statements in the 20 November edition of The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper whose voice has never been silent on the truths of the Jewish Holocaust. In an editorial which might have been written by the Turkish foreign ministry, it sneers at the French Senate for daring to recognise the Armenian genocide, asking whether the British and French should not also apologise for the 1920 Treaty of Sθvres which betrayed Armenia's remaining claims to statehood in mainland Turkey.

 

"These suggestions," it says cloyingly, "are not put forward to diminish, much less relativize [sic] the historical fact that during the First World War, an estimated 600,000 Armenians, possibly more, lost their lives, many in forced deportations to Syria and Palestine orchestrated by Ottoman armies." The editorial, of course, neatly changes the casualty figures. And note how we are told that they "lost their lives". No mention of the fact that the majority of Armenia's manhood were killed either by Turkish firing squads or in mass knifings, or by being burned alive or asphyxiated in caves in 1915 (the world's first gas chambers).

 

Even more insulting to the cities of dead, the Journal refers to doubts about the genocide caused by "serious scholarly debate". Now it happens that this "serious" debate is led by an American academic called Heath Lowry, whose Chair of Ottoman Studies in the US is funded by Turkey and who also works in an advisory capacity to the Turkish ambassador in Washington on ways to deny the Armenian Holocaust. A draft letter Lowry wrote for the ambassador was accidentally enclosed in a note from the Turkish diplomat in which he denied the genocide.

 

But the paper goes on to outline all the reasons why President Clinton - and our own government - now seek to deny the truth of history. Acknowledging the Armenian genocide would "needlessly jeopardise US-Turkish relations". Turkey is a strategic Western ally, "the only secular democracy in the Middle East", the second largest army in Nato. Turkey wants to join the EU. "Europe could take full advantage of Turkey's low cost of labour, just as the US has in Mexico." Europe "sorely needs the vast labour pool Turkey has to offer, as many European employers will attest".

 

It is difficult to stop the gorge rising at such revolting remarks. Because of Turkey's military power, its so-called "democracy", its bulwark against "Islamic radicals", its desire to join the EU and its cheap, exploited labour market, we must censor out of history one of the most terrible atrocities to have been committed. This is what lies behind President Clinton's cowardly remarks to the US Senate. This is what lies behind President Chirac's refusal to comment publicly on the French Senate resolution. And this is what lies behind the weasel words of Mr Frater's letter.

 

What next? In 50 or 80 years' time, will a new, more right-wing, resurgent Germany expect the same exemption from the Jewish Holocaust? Will we have to indulge the likes of Mr Irving suggesting that "contentious scholarly debate" renders the Shoah historically questionable? Will we be told by Mr Frater's successor that more recent genocides mean that the Jewish Holocaust cannot be acknowledged?

 

For that is the terrible implication of the grotesque response we are now making to Turkey's Ottoman brutalities. The Armenians have long commemorated their Holocaust on 24 April each year - the date in 1915 when the first Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and liquidated by Turks in Constantinople. The Armenians wished to be included in the 27 January commemoration. They have been turned away. Which is why 27 January will represent a truth - the facts of the Jewish genocide. But why it will also represent a lie - because, for cheap economic, political and military reasons, it will fail to address the genesis of Jewish suffering: the deliberate destruction of one and a half million Armenian men, women and children.

[hyecory]

THE FORGOTTEN CHRISTIANS OF THE EAST

BY THEODORE G. KARAKOSTAS

SEPTEMBER 16,2001

 

The Attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington are a reminder of the existence of evil in the world. It is very clear that Islamic extremism has made its way to America and Europe. In 1995, there were a series of bombings in France related to the civil war in Algeria between the military government and Fundamentlaists. YET, FOR THE PAST 1,400 YEARS EASTERN CHRISTIAN HAVE LIVED WITH, ENDURED, AND COPED UNDER SHARIA (ISLAMIC LAW). The first Islamic conquests took place during the last decade of the rule of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610-641). Syria, Egypt, and Palestine were lost to Christianity. Christian leaders such as Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem made deals with Caliph Omar for the protection of his flock and Christendom's Holy places.

 

Despite Islam's claim of tolerance, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, and other Eastern Christians found themselves under terrible conditions. While not immediately forced to convert, Christians were forced to submit and to accept their new rulers as their masters. Economic pressures and discrimination contributed to the eventual conversion of milliions of Christians to Islam.

 

The Losses of Eastern Christianity continued following the invasions of Byzantium that were begun by the Seljuk Turks in August 1071. Steadily, Greek Christians were converted to Islam and adopted Turkish and Arabic as their languages. In 1453, Sultan Mehmed II achieved one of Islame's most notorious conquests when he conquered Constantinople and defeated the Christian Empire's last emperor Constantine Paleologos.

 

Europe evenutally made peace with the Sultan at the expense of Christian Greeks, Serbs, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Albanians,and Armenains. Christian boys were kidnapped and taken to the Janissaries for conversion to Islam and political indoctination. Women were taken into harems, churches were converted into mosques and Christians were forced to acknowledge the superiority of their rulers. "Zakat," a special tax, was imposed on Chrisitian s. Disputes between Christians and Muslims were heard in Islamic Courts. At the dawn of the Twentieth Century, there will still millions of Christians in the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1915, the Young Turks began a process ofslaughering one and a half million Armenian Christians. Furthermore, the Greeks of Pontus and Asia Minor were likewise targeted for extermination. In 1919, the greek Army liberated the ancient city of Smryna. Smryna is one of the seven churches that St. John wrote to in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. The Greek and Armenian Christians who sought their right to self determination were denied not only by Turkish Muslims such as Mustapha Kemal and Noureddin *****, but by the western powers looking to protect their economic and geostratic interests at the expense of the Eastern Churches. In September 1922, the Metropolitan of Smryna, Chrysotomos, was butchered and thrown into the sea. French soldiers who witnessed this horror did not intervene.

 

In fact, the French, the Italians, the British, and the Americans armed the Turks while denying the Greek army the means to effectively fight Kemal's forces. In 1923, Asia Minor was ethnically cleansed when over one million Greeks were expelled upon the orders of Mustapha Kemal. The region where the Seven Ecumenical Councils took places was cleansed of Christianity.

 

On September 6, l955, the Turkish government (now secular but as fanatical and anti-Christian as its predecessors) sponsored a vicious pogrom against the Greeks of Constantinople. Most Greeks fled the former Christian Capital and there are only 2,500 left today. Ober the past eight years, there have been four bombings of the Ecumenical Patriarchate by fundamentalist extremists. There is no coverage of this in western media just as as the slaugther of Turkey's Christian populations is virtually unknown by most westerners. Since l984, over two million Christians in the Sudan have been killed in genocidal assaults by the country's Fundamentalist regime. There have been wide reports that Black Christians are literally slaves who are puchased like property, owned, and then sold. Yet, the United States, Europe, NATO and CNN have been rather quiet.

 

In Egypt, the ancient Coptic Chruch hasbenn suffering for centuries. Christians are discriminated against, beaten , terrorized,and murdered while their churches are desecrated and destroyed. When Fundamentalists embarked on a terror campaign against western tourists a few years ago, these attacks were widely reported. The Copts were not mentioned.

 

Armenian Christian have been fighting for their survival in Nagorno Artsax against Azerbaijan since l988. The Armenians were almost annihilated as a result of the Turkish Genocide, yet western companies are looking to placate Turkey by lobbying to prevent recognition by the United States of the Armenian genocide and are interested in Oil in areas like Azerbaijan which leads them to oppose the humanitarian interests of Armenia.

 

The last decade has benn a painful one for Eastern Orthodox Christians. The 1990's began happilyenough with the collapse of Communism and the liberation of Orthodox Churches in Russia, Ukraine, Byelosrussia, Georgia, Bulgaria,Romania, and Serbia.However, when Serbs reacted to the revial of fascism in Croatia and of islamic Fundimentalism in Bosnia, and proceeded to defend themselves, they were condemned by the entire world. It was during the Bosnian war that the Clinton administration chose to allow mass murderers like Osama Bin Laden, Afganistan, Saudia Arabia, and Turkey to invade the Balkans to fight the Serbs, who were seeking to fulfill their right to self determination. The madness of the West's policy in the Balkans reached its apogee when it decalred war on Christian Serbia in 1999 abnd NATO proceeeded to bomb not only military targets but civilian targets such as monasteries, hospitals, and trains. Furthermore, the use of depleted uranium by NATO has been the cause of cancer and leukemia among soldiers and civilians.

 

In December 1998, the Clinton administration announced it would not bomb Iraq during the month of Ramadam ,when Muslims fast. This was despite claims by the administration that Baghdad was developing weapons of mass destruction. Yet on Orthodox Easter1999, NATO bombs continued to fall on Serbia without interruption.

 

It must be noted that Oslama Bin Laden, the architect of mass murder and human suffering. had established a base in Albania, Bosnia (whose government is said to have given him a passport) and NATO- occupied Kosovo. In fact, the detaching of Kosovo from Serbia by NATO is the West's most recent sacrifice of Eastern Christianity.

 

It should be noted that there is tolerance for Christianity in the islamic world. Iran has a large Armenian community and allows its Christians to be elected to Parliament and to be sworn in on a Bible. Syria has long been known for its tolerance of Christianity. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch is located In Damascus and has a flock of at least half a million or so. Iraq, likewise, tolerates its Christian communities. In Palestine, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate recently received the support of the Palestinian leadership again the intervention of the Israelis in its recent election. Over the last several years, there have been various anti-Orthodox commentaries in the western media. The Serbs in particular have been demonized. Some writers have accused Greece of being "Muslim hating." This is particulary bizarre in light of the history that Orthodox Christians have experienced.

 

The attack of the World Trade Center was an act of barbarism. Religion should not be confused with political extremism. Yet, barbarian acts like this by religious fanatics are routine for Eastern Christians struggling to survive in some Muslim countries. It is my fervent wish and hope that America will recognize the fanatical zealots and what they are capable of, and that American and Europe will finally not only ackowldege Eastern Christianity and its bloody experiences, but it will stop sacrificing Eastern Churches and their flocks to the likes of Turkey, which has a strong fundamentalist movement and an Islamic partner in the governments of Egypt, Bosnia, and others.

 

SOURCE: HELLENICFORUM