Month: April 2016

“Turkish President was yet another failed expression of denialim, an obvious attempt to lay the responsibility for the genocide on Armenians,” Armenian deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan told a press conference today.

“Turkey maintains efforts to put the victims of war and the victims of genocide planned and perpetrated on a state level,” he added.

“Turkey’s denialist posture further increases the gap between the Armenian and Turkish peoples, acknowledgement of history and penitence is the best way to overcome it,” th Deputy Foreign Minister said.

Iranian Armenians gathered at a cathedral in Tehran on Sunday to commemorate victims of the killings of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks over a century ago, reports.

The German Bundestag is set to vote on an Armenian Genocide bill on June 2, according to an agreement reached in April between the Greens and the government.

The ruling coalition, the Left and the Alliance90/Green Parties have reached an agreement to call the 1915 events “genocide.”

If adopted, the bill will come to replace the special resolution adopted by the Bundestag on 2008, which, failed to label the events as “‘genocide,” calling them “massacre” and “forced deportation” instead.

“The things that come on German agenda, are shown on German TV or discussed in the Bundestag are not decided by Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Putin or other authoritarian leaders. I’m glad that thanks to consistent serious work we’ve reached a joint approach with the Federal Government to raise the issue of the genocide of Armenians and other Christians in the Bundestag,” Green Party Co-Chair Cem Özdemir told .

“I’m glad that we can finally recognize the Armenian genocide with a joint resolution,” he said.

Green Party brought the motion to the parliament in February, but the voting was postponed, since coalition parties Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) demanded a common motion.

Bundestag discussed a motion on April 24, 2015 for the first time, but there was no voting. While the government avoided using the term “genocide”, President and President of Bundestag Norbert Lammert openly used the word “genocide” to describe the events of 1915.

“Friendship with Turkey does not mean we have to keep silent about the issues, especially considering that we share the responsibility as an ally of the Ottoman Empire. We want to see a strong, European Turkey. The opening of the shared border is in the interests on not only Turkey, but also Armenia and Europe,” Özdemir said.

The Armenian Genocide was commemorated today at Istanbul’s Hayderpasha train station, the reports.

Participants held banners and photographs of the intellectuals arrested and killed in 1915, and posters demanding recognition and reparations for the Armenian Genocide.

In 1915, members of the Istanbul Armenian community, including intellectual and cultural leaders, were arrested in their homes, detained at the city’s central prison (now the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Sultanahmet Square), and then sent off to the Haydarpasha train station from where they were sent to the interior to their deaths.

The following statement by the Human Rights Association of Turkey Istanbul branch was read in Turkish, Armenian, and English at today’s commemoration.

***

The Genocide that Lasts

When a crime goes unpunished, it continues to be committed. Denial perpetuates genocide.

The Armenian Genocide is a crime against humanity that continues to be committed because it is denied and its perpetrators have gone unpunished.

One-hundred-and-one years ago today, people from all walks of life from the Armenian community, but especially leading intellectuals, poets, writers, and journalists, were shipped here to Haydarpasha from Sarayburnu before they were sent to their deaths in Anatolia. Very few survived; most were killed.

These arrests represent the beginning of the genocidal process realized by way of clear orders by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the central government of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the effective organization of the provinces for the execution of these orders and the participation of the local inhabitants.

Before 1915, according to the census of the Istanbul Patriarchate, the Armenian population of the Empire was 2 million, and Armenians lived in 2,925 settlements comprising cities, districts, and villages. These communities had 1,996 schools, 173,000 male and female students, and 2,538 churches and monasteries. The Armenian social existence, which had been strikingly vibrant, was destroyed not only by outright massacres and exile, but also through the demolition of social infrastructure such as schools, libraries, churches, etc., as well as material dispossession. Their institutions, culture, history, and civilization, even the vestiges of their existence were subject to destruction.

The genocide of 1915 was also “SEYFO,” the mass massacre and exile of the Assyrian people. It was also the genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor and Pontus.

If we have declared that genocide denial perpetuates genocide, it is because denial becomes institutionalized, and in fact socialized and internalized by generations of perpetrators. Denial continually reproduces hatred against the identity of the victims.

By going unpunished, this crime against humanity was perpetuated in Turkey through coups, the bloody suppression of the Kurdish insurrection, the Dersim genocide, the incineration and evisceration of villages in the 90’s, and the reduction of millions of people to refugees in their own country. The 1915 genocide and its denial—the assumption that the state can act outside the law and commit crimes whenever it wants—became entrenched in the system and in minds; it was naturalized, and normalized. It is by and large for this reason that coups, torture, forced disappearances, murders by unknown assailants came to be seen not as crimes but as necessary and mandatory executions of the state. Those who were responsible were protected by the mantle of impunity.

Today, this internalized state mentality has resulted in the war that the state has been waging  since August 2015 against the Kurds with its army, with tanks and cannons; it is also at the root of the absence of strong mass resistance from the Turkish people to this war.

As we have said, genocide denial perpetuates genocide. Denial is the exculpation of the perpetrator and the criminalization of the victim. From course books to special publications, from newspapers to television programs, Armenians have been represented as those who deserve genocide. Since the foundation of the Republic, the Armenians of Turkey have been living to this day in a society that remains hostile to them and in close quarters with the grandchildren of perpetrators who think exactly the way their predecessors did.

Whenever the state feels threatened, the usual hostility against Armenians spikes up to horrific levels. Armenians are all the more threatened today under the circumstances of a thoroughly racist war perpetrated by the state against its own citizens, the Kurds, against the grain of all universal laws of war.

Genocide denial leads to the indoctrination of anti-Armenian nationalist generations, to a never-ending offense against the memory of the victims, and to the laceration of their descendants’ wounds. As descendants of perpetrators, we too are responsible for denial; we live with this profound shame.

There has been no end to blood, tears, and laments in Turkey since the genocide and its denial. This is because the crime has gone unpunished and in fact continued with new crimes whose perpetrators too have gone unpunished—because justice has not been established. The graveless dead of the genocide continue to suffer their torment.

We have always said and hereby repeat:

– As long as the genocide remains unrecognized,

– As long as an apology is not offered to the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks who have dispersed all over the world,

– As long as the confiscated cash and property remains uncompensated,

– As long as the war against the Kurds continues and the Kurds’ right to self-determination remains unrecognized,

– As long as an order in keeping with democracy, the rule of law, and human rights is not established,

justice will not be established. The curse of the genocide will not be lifted, and these regions will never see the light of day. This is not a prediction, but a statement of fact.

RECOGNIZE THE GENOCIDE WITH ALL ITS LEGAL IMPLICATIONS! ESTABLISH JUSTICE!

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued the following statement on the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide;

On this day, we mark the 101^st commemoration of the tragic loss of life of the Armenian population during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Both the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons have adopted resolutions referring to these events as genocide.

We preserve the memory of those who lost their lives, and those who suffered during this genocide and pay our deepest respects to their descendants, including those who now call Canada home.

In solemnly acknowledging this event, let us use this moment as an opportunity to look forward and strengthen our collective resolve to ensure such acts are never again repeated.

While we must never forget the lessons of history, we must also be reminded that past injustices do not serve our communities if they divide us. Canadians of all backgrounds and faiths stand together in reaffirming our collective commitment to the values of pluralism, human rights, and diversity.

On this anniversary, please join me in my hope for a peaceful future based on tolerance, respect, and reconciliation.

A ceremony Friday at Fresno City Hall commemorated the 101st anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, in which as many as 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire over several years, the reports.

For the oldest members of the Armenian diaspora in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley, the wounds and memories of the genocide are particularly acute, as it was their parents and grandparents who lived through the systematic deportations and killings in their historic homeland. But Friday’s ceremony also held special meaning for younger Armenians carrying on efforts to maintain their ethnic identity and strive for recognition of what their ancestors endured.

Young Armenian Homenetmen scouts raised the U.S., California and Armenian Republic flags on the City Hall flagpoles as about 250 members of the Valley’s Armenian community gathered on the lawn. The ceremony included speeches by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno; Danny Tarkanian, son of former UNLV and Fresno State basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian; and Raffi Hamparian, national chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America.

Hagop Minasyan, a 16-year-old student at Fresno’s Central East High School, was one of several boys holding signs declaring “Turkey guilty of genocide” in front of City Hall. His great-grandparents were genocide survivors, and his parents were the first generation of his family to come to the U.S.

Michael Rettig, 24, of Fresno held a sign with a picture of his maternal great-great-grandfather, Mgrdich Dinjian. “He was hacked to death early in the killings,” Rettig said. “He worked in one of the churches, and the story is that he had a lot of books, that he was an intellectual.” He added that the activism of younger Armenians is sparked “especially when we find a personal connection, like this photo of my great-great-grandfather, who was killed along with two-thirds of the Armenians” in Turkey.

He and others are upset not only with Turkey’s longstanding denial of the genocide, but also with the cultural “erasure” of Armenian culture in Turkey. “Armenians lived there for thousands of years, and now there’s no trace of us,” Rettig said. “That is why we have to protest.”

The popularity of social media is also making the genocide more relevant and meaningful to younger Armenians, said Tanya Toramasian, a 20-year-old college student who recently moved with her family from Chicago to Fresno. She watched the ceremony and listened to speakers with an red, blue and orange Armenian flag draped over her shoulders.

“I personally met my great-grandmother who was a genocide survivor, so it touches me even more because I actually met her and heard her stories about what she went through,” Toramasian said. “Our voice is the loudest thing, and with social media, everyone is learning now about the Armenian genocide. … We’re the youth, and we need to make sure everyone knows about it. That’s why there are so many of us here today.”

That’s the sort of enthusiasm that Hamparian – who lives near Pasadena and works in government affairs for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority – sought to inspire with his remarks.

Hamparian recited the names of seven Armenian soldiers who died in fighting earlier this month between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh in the region of Artsakh, historically one of the last Armenian kingdoms and now part of Nagorno-Karbakh. After each name, Hamparian declared that “he died three weeks ago in defense of Artsakh. He died to prevent another Armenian genocide. He died for me and for you.”

“It is fair and reasonable for us today here in the diaspora, here in California, in the abundant Central Valley, to ask ourselves: Can we have heroes here?” he said. “Yes, we do have heroes here, who make our community work (and) who remind a new generation to rise and raise others.”

He invoked the title of the hit movie “The Revenant,” and explored the French origins of the word meaning “to come back.” “This word is especially relevant to us. … We are, after all, a people who have come back from annihilation.”

Costa spoke of his empathy for the memory of genocide from growing up among Armenian families in the Rolinda area west of Fresno. “While I may be an ‘odar’ (an Armenian word for non-Armenians), today we are all Armenians,” he said.

“Through the recognition of the Armenian genocide, we pay tribute to the perseverance and the determination of those who were able to survive, as well as the Americans of Armenian descent who have helped strengthen this country,” Costa added. “As we reflect this day, it is fitting that we honor the thousands of Armenian men and women who began lives in the U.S. after witnessing unspeakable tragedies.”

One of those was Tarkanian’s paternal grandmother, Rose, who was a child when Ottoman Turkish soldiers raided her village. Her mother put her in a dress with coins sewn into it, put Rose and her brother on a horse and sent them out of town before the soldiers arrived. Rose’s father and older brother were both beheaded by soldiers, he said, “and the rest of the villagers were herded into the church where the soldiers burned them alive.”

And Hamparian exhorted the crowd to fight “in a very American way” to push for presidential recognition of the genocide and changes in U.S. policy toward the conflict over Artsakh by strengthening Armenian churches and community organizations “to fight for your diaspora to be in the arena.”

“To change U.S. policy on Artsakh will not be easy. To change U.S. policy on the Armenian genocide will not be easy,” he said. “But nothing in life that is worthwhile, that has value, is ever easy.”

Today, at the K. Demirjian Sport and Concert Compound President Serzh Sargsyan participated at the opening of the which was conducted under the subtitle Living Witnesses of Genocide
At the Forum the President of Armenia made a statement.

Statement by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan at the opening of the Second Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide

Distinguished guests,
Distinguished participants of the Global Forum,

One year ago, on the eve of the Armenian Genocide Centennial, I had the honor to declare the launching of the work of this Global Forum, with a strong faith in its mission and success. That mission was to identify the issues related to the prevention of genocide, develop the avenues for their resolution and consolidate the potential of the civilized humankind in order to register a decisive victory over the crimes against humanity in the 21st century.

Today, as one year has passed since then, I can state with the outmost certainty that we have achieved those objectives: the first forum found extensive response both with the expert community and thousands of people both in Armenia and way beyond its borders. It provided with an opportunity to the world to discuss anew genocide as the gravest crime committed by human beings. That was a reason good enough for us to make this conference a permanent platform for those individuals, genocide survivors, their successors and, of course, States and international structures that are determind and consentaneous to make their contribution to this universal struggle.

I warmly welcome you all, and I am very glad that we are united.

Ladies and gentlemen,
2015 was an important milestone for us to grasp anew the one hundred year-long struggle of our nation for its right to exist and restoration of historical justice. The Armenian Genocide Centennial was marked not by mourning but the messages of gratitude and revival that we sent out to the world, as well as determination to make the Republic of Armenia one of the pioneering forces to lead the struggle against that crime. Our vision is crystal crisp: it is necessary to instill consciousness of the absolute inadmissability of genocide in order to prevent such catastrophes unfolding.

2015 was important in that context since a number of Heads of States, Parliaments, international structures, religious organizations, prominent individuals expressed their solidarity to our joint struggle against genocide by recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide.

The current logics of the global development unambiguously registers that we are all interdependent, and that interdependence transforms a failure of one into a failure of all, and that is also true for a success or suffering. Today it is difficult to imagine a security challenge that threatens only one nation. Therefore, none of us can consider oneself ensured against the horrors that our ancestors went through in the 20th century, that our contemporaries are surviving in the 21st century unless we decide that we should state ‘never again’ regardless of the price that every one of us should pay. That same logics also reminds us that a genocide committed at any corner of the world should be viewed as a failure for the international community as a whole, and the prevention of it is the duty of every single one of us individually and of the humankind collectively. Hence, it is natural that those, who underwent and survived genocide and their generations shall be continuously looking at the international community and pressing for justice.

Distinguished participants,
The general heading for this year’s conference is “Living Witnesses of Genocide” that allows us to uncover the issues of outmost importance related both to addressing the consequences of genocide and its prevention. Today there are here with us living witnesses that survived genocide. People, who felt on their own skin the indescribable and unutterable horrors of genocide, irremidiable pain of loss, yearn, homeland dispossession, and at the time they should have bade farewell to their own past and future. For every single one of them it was hard to be optimistic, but they are here to register that genocide perpetrators have not won. I strongly believe that they all have gone through a valorous path and throughout that path they met people, who extended helping hand, assisted in their recovery and inspired their hopes… People, who revolted against the scourge of their time and did not bear with indifference, who neglected their very own interests since they could have not beared with injustice, who risked themselves in order to save one more human life.

Today, unfortunately, the humankind still lacks humanness. It is demostrated by the wave of denial by the genocide perpetrators and their successors. It was rightly noted by the Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel that to deny would be akin to killing victims a second time. In some instances denial is expressed through violation of the right to remembrance and awareness. Denial imposes constant feeling of fear unto the survivors and their successors since those who deny or justify what had happened do not directly exclude the possibility of ruccurence of that very same crime should there be aproppriate conditions for that.

Meanwhile, I believe that the international legal documents related to the crime of genocide do not pay due attention to the international legal regulation of the issues related to the genocide survivors. The same is also true for the international legal regime related to the refugees. It is critical to understand how to define a special legal status for survivors of genocide and other crimes against humanity through the improvement of the existing legal mechanisms or introduction of new legal norms; otherwise, perhaps, it would be impossible to comprehensively approach this issue.
Any reasonable adjudication of a crime requires also recognition of the rights of the victims concerning their losses and suffering. Certainly, it is also true for the survivors of genocide and other crimes against humanity. Necessary mechanisms should be installed, which will allow both recognizing that right and implementing it.

Distinguished colleagues,

As recent crises in the Middle East have demonstrated, nowadays the issue of genocide prevention remains urgent and topical. Lately, the world has been watching with repulsion how the terrorists of the Islamic State have been torturing, beheading and mutilating innocent people, including women, children, and elderly people. The world is shocked with the barbarities that are carried out by a gang of thugs, who can hardly be called to justice and can be fought against barely with missiles.
Nevertheless, if the thugs that carry out atrocities are fought with missiles, a question comes up: what kind of responsibility should bear a State, a subject of international law, for condoning and carrying out similar crimes?

What would you say of a country, a fully-fledged subject of international law, a member of the UN, Council of Europe and various other structures, a signatory of the humanitarian conventions, whose script is not much different from that of the Islamic State? Just a few weeks ago, during the large-scale offensive unleashed by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh, Azeri soldiers were not content with just shooting their arms: they mutilated elderly people, Armenian soldiers, decapitated them and cut off their ears and presented those actions in the social networks as a manifestation of heroism. It was all evidently encouraged by the Azerbaijani authorities. Is not it bizarre that a country that pursues such barbaric policy and violates all the norms of civilized conduct, these days is going to host a conference under the rubric of “Alliance of Civilizations?” Is this an approach to be tolerated? We must get to the point, when a display of such hatred shall not be tolerated, when any government shall refrain from such conduct mindful that it may be hold responsible for it.
We as the international community must swiftly and resolutely eradicate all such instances of genocidal conduct wherever they should occur, as it was done some days ago by the leadership and public of Sweden with regard to the hate speech directed against Armenians by the Turkish nationalist Barbaros Leylani. This requires our concerted effort, perhaps even subordination of geopolitical interests, ability to voice strict and targeted condemnation. Unless we are able to nip such conduct in the bud, we will have to deal with the elimination of their various and unpredictable consequences; we will continue to face various crimes nourished by hatred – crimes, among which are the terrorist activities that gain new range and scale on our continent.

Ladies and gentlemen,
On the Armenian Genocide Centennial the Armenian nation sent out a message of gratitude to the entire world. The Hundred Lives initiative and the Aurora Prize were launched on behalf of the survivors and as a token of appreciation to those who in the direst times came to the Armenian people’s rescue. I congratulate and express my admiration to the nominees of the Prize. All your stories are very touching; at the same time, those are inspiring and encouraging. I thank the founders of this project – Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan, and Ruben Vardanian, organizers of the award ceremony, as well as all those who have contributed to the implementation of this momentous initiative.

I wish all of us productive work. I also wish that future generations learn about crimes against humanity only from books.