Armenian Assembly of America
122 C Street, NW, Suite 350
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-393-3434
Fax: 202-638-4904
Email: [email protected]
Web:
PRESS RELEASE
April 2, 2004
CONTACT: David Zenian
E-mail: [email protected]
ARMENIAN ASSEMBLY: REFERENCE TO ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLOUDED BY TURKISH
INFLUENCE
Washington, DC — The Armenian Assembly this week called on Secretary of
State Colin Powell to re-examine his Department’s most recent human rights
report on Turkey, clarify repeated incorrect references to the Armenian
Genocide and unequivocally distance itself from the Turkish policy of
denial.
Board of Directors Chairman Anthony Barsamian said the Assembly was
“greatly troubled” by the use of the words “alleged” and “allegation” in
contexts which seem “unquestionably influenced by Turkish assuage clouding
State Department reporting.”
“The Armenian Assembly urges you to re-clarify that the use of the words
‘alleged’ and ‘allegations’ … do not reflect an official Department of
State position,” Barsamian said in his letter.
Under Section 2(a) and again under Section 5 of the Department’s report
entitled “Turkey: Country reports on Human Rights Practices for the Year
2003,” the authors of the report spoke of “the alleged genocide of Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire” and “allegations that the Ottomans committed
genocide against Armenians.”
Both sections cited gross violations of human rights in Turkey, including a
demand by the Turkish Ministry of Education that fifth and seventh-grade
students, including Armenians, prepare a one-page essay – in the words of
the State Department report – “arguing that allegations that the Ottomans
committed genocide against the Armenians are ‘baseless.’ ”
The report was released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
and submitted by the Department to Congress by the department of State on
February 25, 2004.
Barsamian said while as far back as 1982 the State Department had clarified
similar language by adding a footnote to explain that it was “not intended
as statements of policy of the United States … Nor did they represent any
change in U.S. policy,” similar errors appeared in the Department’s most
recent human rights report on Turkey.
“In fact,” Barsamian said in his letter to Powell, “prior to 1982, the
Department of State squarely acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and
recommended that Turkey acknowledge the crimes against humanity.”
The Armenian Assembly of America is the largest Washington-based nationwide
organization promoting public understanding and awareness of Armenian
issues. It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt membership organization.
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NR#2004-034
Editor’s Note: Attached is the text of the Assembly letter to Secretary of
State Colin Powell.
April 1, 2004
The Honorable Colin L. Powell
Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Mr. Secretary:
The Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) is greatly troubled by the references
made to the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 as “alleged” genocide or
“allegations” of genocide in the report entitled: “Turkey: Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices For the Year 2003,” which was released by the
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and submitted to Congress by
the Department of State on February 25, 2004.
Specifically, under Section 2(a), the report states:
In June, authorities arrested and indicted teacher Hulya Akpinar for
comments she made during a conference in Kilis Province on the alleged
genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire. Prosecutors also charged six
other teachers for following Akpinar out of the conference. Akpinar was
temporarily dismissed from duty following her arrest. A Kilis court
acquitted Akpinar and the other six teachers in December [emphasis added].
Furthermore, under Section 5: National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities, the report
states:
In April, the Education Ministry issued a circular urging all schools to
have their fifth- and seventh-graders prepare a one-page essay arguing that
allegations that the Ottomans committed genocide against Armenians are
“baseless.” The country’s Armenian schools were included in the
distribution. Leaders of the ethnic Armenian community criticized the
measure, saying it put psychological pressure on Armenian students. The
Ministry also asked schools to organize conferences on the issue, and
police arrested seven teachers for comments made at one such conference (see
Section 2.a.) [Emphasis added].
As you can imply, in Section 2(a), the wording of the paragraph is
unquestionably influenced by Turkish assuage clouding State Department
reporting. The use of the word “alleged” in this paragraph could not have
been “accurate and objective,” and may have been a reference to how the
Turkish government framed the issue and do not reflect U.S. policy.
Moreover, in Section 5, by not putting the word “allegations” in quotations,
you have given credence to Turkish claims, and thus again clouding the
“accurate and objective” reporting of the Department of State.
In response to the August 1982 Department of State Bulletin in which the
State Department used the word “alleged” four times in references to the
1915 Armenian Genocide, the September 1982 and April 1983 Department of
State Bulletin, under the “Editor’s Note,” retracted those statements
confirming that they “were not intended as statements of policy of the
United States. Nor did they represent any change in U.S. policy.”
Both then-Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Lawrence S.
Eagleburger, and then-Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Department
Spokesman, John Hughes, “reemphasized” the “aberration” and reaffirmed to us
that “[p]olicy statements which are a part of the public record remain there
and speak for themselves.”
This April 24th will mark the 89th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide of
1915, an incontestable historical fact, during which 1.5 million
(three-fourths) of the Armenian people living in the Ottoman Empire were
“exterminated” en masse and the few that remained (half a million) were
uprooted from their homelands of more than 2,500 years and deported under
extreme conditions into exile. The U.S. Archives is replete with Department
of State documents describing the premeditated “race extermination” of the
Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-23. Moreover, there is the
fact that the Armenian Genocide was soon thereafter confirmed by yet another
branch of the U.S. Government, in Senate Resolution 359 dated May 13, 1920,
in which it resoundingly stated: “the testimony adduced at the hearings
conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other
atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered.” Finally, on
January 28, 1975, a Joint Resolution by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America, H.J. Res. 148, designated
April 24, 1975, as “National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man.”
In fact, prior to 1982, the Department of State squarely acknowledged the
Armenian Genocide and recommended that Turkey acknowledge the crimes against
humanity. This position was again clouded by Turkish influence on
Department of State employees who are in charge of preparing reports on the
Armenian Genocide.
Contemporaneously and more importantly, the International Center for
Transnational Justice (ICTJ), which was asked to determine the applicability
of the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention to the Armenian Genocide,
released a report finding that the 1915 mass slaughter of Armenians fits the
legal definition of genocide. One of the key findings in the ICTJ report
concluded that “the Events, viewed collectively, can thus be said to include
all of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined in the Convention,
and legal scholars as well as historians, politicians, journalists and other
people would be justified in continuing to so describe them.”
Finally, as part of the groundbreaking conference held in September 2000 by
the Library of Congress and the Armenian National Institute in cooperation
with the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the prestigious Cambridge University Press,
early in 2004, released a vital new publication, entitled America and the
Armenian Genocide of 1915, covering all facets of the leading American
response to the Armenian Genocide, which encompassed the first international
human rights movement in American history.
On this upcoming solemn occasion, the Armenian Assembly urges you to
re-clarify that the use of the words “alleged” and “allegations” in the
above mentioned Department of State report do not “reflect an official
position of the Department of State,” and further urges you to displace
error with truth: that the Armenian Genocide is not an “allegation” but is
an irrefutable historical fact, unwavering to political vicissitudes.
Sincerely,
Anthony Barsamian
Chairman,
Board of Directors
Armenian Assembly of America