ANCA AND GENOCIDE INTERVENTION NETWORK CALL ON UN TO OVERRIDE TURKEY’S OBJECTIONS TO RWANDA GENOCIDE EXHIBIT

ArmRadio.am
12.04.2007 11:48

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Chairman Ken Hachikian,
in a letter sent to the United Nations, called upon the international
body to reverse its recent decision to close a major exhibit,
organized by the Aegis Trust, on the Rwanda Genocide due to the Turkish
government’s objection over a portion of the display that referenced
the Armenian Genocide.

The ANCA letter, addressed to Kiyotaka Akasaka, Under-Secretary-
General for Communications and Public Information, expressed the
"Armenian American community’s profound disappointment over the
decision to allow the Turkish government to delay – and quite
possibly cancel – a United Nations exhibit intended to help ensure
that the lessons of the Rwanda Genocide are used to help prevent
future genocides."

Hachikian stressed that the dismantling of the exhibit represents "a
troubling retreat from the founding principles of the United Nations,"
and added that, "in allowing Turkey’s protest over the exhibit’s
historically accurate mention of the Armenian Genocide to delay its
opening, you have, very unfortunately, undermined the credibility of
the United Nations on a central issue of our time – ending forever
the cycle of genocide. Rather than rightfully standing up for the
organization’s highest values, you permitted the immoral objections
of one member state, Turkey, to drag the entire institution into
complicity in that nation’s shameless campaign of genocide denial."

Commenting on the UN’s decision, Mark Hanis, Executive Director of
the Genocide Intervention Network, said that, "Hitler felt justified
to carry out the Holocaust when he saw how little resistance there
was to the Armenian genocide of 1915. It is incumbent on the UN to
ensure that the atrocities of Armenia and other past genocides are
exposed, not just for the memory of those dead but for the safety of
future generations."

Commenting on the exhibit’s postponement, James Smith, the chief
executive of the British-based Aegis Trust, said, "If we can’t get
this right, it undermines all the values of the UN. It undermines
everything the UN is meant to stand for in terms of preventing
(genocide). . . You can’t learn the lessons from history if you’re
going to sweep all of that history under the carpet. And what about
accountability? What about ending impunity if you’re going to hide
part of the truth? It makes a mockery of all of this."

Serj Tankian, songwriter, singer, poet, activist and lead singer of
Grammy Award-winning band System of a Down, and Carla Garapedian,
who directed the award-winning documentary "SCREAMERS" about
the band’s anti-genocide advocacy, issued a statement condemning
the UN’s decision: "We are very shocked by this decision by the
Secretary General to remove mention of a historical event which is
well-documented by thousands of official records of the United States
and nations around the world, including Turkey’s wartime allies,
Germany, Austria and Hungary; by Ottoman court martial records;
and by eyewitness accounts of missionaries, diplomats and survivors;
as well as decades of historical scholarship. In the US, President
Bush has called the events the "forced exile and annihilation of
approximately 1.5 million Armenians.’"

Tankian and Garapedian went on to stress that, "The reason why
genocides have continued in the last century – from the Armenian
genocide, to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, to the
genocide going on now in Darfur – is because the international
community has not intervened to stop them. Sadly, the Secretary
General’s decision to stop any mention of the antecedents to the
Rwanda genocide is a blow to those who want to stop genocide now."

The New York Times, Associated Press, and other major news outlets
have reported extensively about the controversy surrounding Turkey’s
pressure to close down the Rwanda Genocide exhibit. The New York Times,
in an April 9th article, explained that, "the panels of graphics,
photos and statements had been installed in the visitors lobby on
Thursday by the British-based Aegis Trust.

The trust campaigns for the prevention of genocide and runs a center
in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, memorializing the 500,000 victims of
the massacres there 13 years ago. Hours after the show was assembled,
however, a Turkish diplomat spotted offending words in a section
entitled ‘What is genocide?’ and raised objections. The passage said
that, ‘following World War I, during which one million Armenians were
murdered in Turkey,’ Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer credited with
coining the word genocide, ‘urged the League of Nations to recognize
crimes of barbarity as international crimes.’"