UCSB ARMENIAN STUDENT ASSOCIATION PROTESTS GENOCIDE DENIAL

The Bottom Line
Feb 11 2015

Alec Killoran
Staff Writer
Photos by Hitashi Bansal

The University of California, Santa Barbara Armenian Student
Association held a silent protest on Feb. 5 across from Storke Tower
to denounce the Turkish government’s continued denial of the Armenian
genocide. 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the genocide perpetrated
by the Ottomans that triggered a diaspora of the Armenian people.

President of UCSB’s Armenian Student Association and fourth-year
sociology and Slavic languages and literature major Hasmik Baghdasaryan
organized the silent protest. The goal of the protest was to bring
awareness to an issue that receives little to no attention in modern
classrooms.

“There’s this whole big chunk of history missing from people’s
knowledge,” Baghdasaryan said. “This is a big enough part of history
that we want to talk about it.”

The protest’s silent nature attracted curious passersby, and the
protesters engaged them in what they feel is a critical conversation.

“As someone whose family was directly affected by the genocide,
it’s more or less disrespectful to have people completely deny
the fact that this is part of history, that this was a genocide,”
Baghdasaryan said. “Not just some part of some war where people die. It
was sanctioned with the purpose of cleansing ethnic minorities.”

Protesters wore black clothing and taped coverings over their mouths,
meant to signify “the denial by the Turkish government and the silence
by everyone else who hasn’t accepted it,” Baghdasaryan said. Indeed,
the federal government of the United States has yet to recognize the
Armenian genocide, though 42 individual states, including California,
have officially recognized it.

The Armenian Student Association is a larger organization with
subgroups at universities throughout California, and it protests the
international community’s denial of the genocide on an annual basis.

ASA at UCSB has made it their primary aim to include the genocide in
the modern historical education lexicon.

“This year we started working with the Armenian National Committee
of America, which is a big lobbying organization to get the different
UC’s to pass a resolution about the recognition and education on the
Armenian genocide,” said Baghdasaryan. The University of California,
Los Angeles passed a resolution to divest from the Republic of Turkey
in January of this year. Though UCSB’s ASA chapter will not be pursuing
such a resolution this year, it hopes to continue raising awareness
on campus.

There is a large Armenian community on campus, and the ASA meets on
Wednesdays at 8 PM in the Middle Eastern Resource Center, which is
housed in the Student Resource Building.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress