ARMENIANS REMEMBER VICTIMS OF 1915 MASSACRE
By Rym Ghazal
Daily Star staff
The Daily Star, Lebanon
April 25, 2006
Turkey still denies targeting minority community
BEIRUT: Thousands of Armenians from all over Lebanon gathered at Bourj
Hammoud Stadium on Monday to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the
Armenian genocide, demanding that Turkey “recognize and apologize for”
the massacre committed by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.
“It was the first massacre of the 20th century to which the whole world
turned a blind eye,” former Minister Alain Tabourian told the crowd.
The gathering was attended by 35,000 Armenians who came wearing the
Armenian flag but singing the national Lebanese anthem as they marched
into the stadium in the Armenian suburb of Beirut.
“Turkey tried to wipe us out of existence, but we survived and were
reborn with new citizenships,” said Tabourian, who also thanked
Lebanon for having welcomed Armenian refugees who fled Turkey. “We
never forgot our roots.”
He also thanked representatives from the government and President
Emile Lahoud, along with Lebanese Forces MP Strida Geagea, who attended
the commemoration ceremony.
Beginning on April 24, 1915, Armenians say about 1.5 million Armenians
“were massacred” by the Ottoman Turks as part of a government-led
“genocide,” a term Turkey has fiercely and consistently rejected for
decades. Ankara also says the dead numbered 300,000-500,000.
Survivors fled to Syria and Lebanon, with the latter now home to the
largest Armenian community in the Arab world, made up of about 75,000
descendants of those who fled the 1915-1917 violence.
“In order for the Armenians to open a new page with Turkey, it has
to acknowledge and admit its crime against us, and apologize for
committing the highest kind of atrocities possible against human
beings,” Tabourian said.
“Their admission of this crime would benefit them and help them
accomplish their dream of entering the European Union, and would give
us our peace and compensation which are rightfully ours,” he added,
referring to EU demands that Turkey face its past and expand freedom
of speech before it can qualify to enter the union.
Apart from the speeches, which were mainly delivered in Armenian, white
balloons were released in honor of those killed in the bloodletting
and in hope that peace can finally be realized between Turkey and
the Armenians.
“It is rather unlikely they Turkey will admit it, but we have to
prove that as Armenians, we still exist, and just as Palestinians are
fighting for their land, so are we,” said one participant at the event,
Anto Narguizian, 17.
“Turkey’s alliance with the United States is very strategic, both
economically and geographically, so the United States will not agree
that such a mass genocide occurred, even if most European states
have agreed to this,” he added. “But if America does not agree,
Turkey will not return the land it has taken from the Armenians,
and will not repay all the damages it has caused.”
Narguizian’s mother, Maral, who did not attend the commemoration,
told The Daily Star: “Everyone has their way of expressing their
beliefs and what they stand for; I would rather express myself through
monetary aid to local charities and churches.”
But she added that these “protests need to be done, to ask for our
rights, which have long been ignored.”