ARMENIANS LAUNCH LARGE CAMPAIGN AGAINST TURKEY

Hurriyet
May 3 2012
Turkey

U.S. Armenians have launched one of their largest donation campaigns to
“help bring down Ankara’s last firewalls against the justice Turkey
owes the Armenian nation,” the biggest and most influential U.S.
Armenian group said on the weekend.

Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) chairman Ken Hachikian
urged Armenians to donate funds to strengthen Armenia and pass the
“Armenian genocide” bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives
and the Senate.

ANCA executive director Aram Hamparian also said there was a quite
good linkage between such campaigns and “the ability of reformers to
implement meaningful remedies to punish the guilty and restore the
rights of those victimized by these crimes.”

“American condemnation in the 1980s of apartheid in South Africa,
a major U.S. Cold War ally, was the first step toward a U.S. policy
of actively seeking to reverse this hateful policy,” Hamparian said
as an example.

“The public’s understanding of the truth and the perpetrator’s eventual
acceptance of its wrongs represented a powerful step toward the
justice required to remedy great offenses against humanity,” he said.

“These examples, while not perfect analogies, shed some light as to
how recognition of the Armenian genocide by the U.S. government and
the acceptance by the Turkish government of its responsibilities for
this crime can, very meaningfully, help pave the way for a truthful
and just resolution of the Armenian genocide,” Hamparian said.

“The Turkish government understands this reality. Its leaders,
intelligence officers and diplomats are well aware of the stakes.

Denial is their last firewall against justice. That’s why Ankara
devotes millions of dollars and a growing share of its political
capital to preventing U.S. and international recognition of the
Armenian genocide,” he said.

“And that’s why we need your help in generating the Armenian American
political power to both end U.S. complicity in Ankara’s denial of
the Armenian genocide, and to finally break the back of the Turkish
state and society’s obstruction of the truth and justice owed to the
Armenian nation,” Hamparian said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress