Author: Kajoyan Gevork

VLADIMIR PUTIN: 1.5 MLN ARMENIANS WERE KILLED, 600 THSD WERE DEPORTED, UNIQUE HISTORICAL MONUMENTS AND INVALUABLE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS WERE DESTROYED IN 1915

by Tatevik Shahunyan

Friday, April 24, 13:51

Russia extends its cordial condolences to Armenian people, who suffered
one of the greatest tragedies of the world. 1.5 mln Armenians were
killed, 600 thsd were deported, unique historical and architectural
monuments and invaluable books and manuscripts were destroyed in
1915, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Armenian Genocide
Centennial commemoration event at Tsitsernalaberd Memorial Complex
in Yerevan.

“The events of 1915 shocked the world. Russia took that grief as its
own. Millions of Armenians found shelter in Russia. It was the Russian
diplomacy that gained international condemnation of those events.

Russia, France and Great Britain issued a joint statement qualifying
those events as a crime against civilization and humanity,” said the
Russian President. He added that Armenian and Russian nations have
been connected with warm relations for centuries. He also recalled
WWII and the earthquake in Spitak, Armenia.

Putin pointed out that hundreds of Russian cities will hold over
2,000 events commemorating the Armenian Genocide Centennial and not
only the 3 million Armenians in Russia but also representatives of
other nationalities will take part in the events.

“Our stand remains unchanged – the mass killings cannot be justified
anyhow. We should do everything possible to prevent the tragic events
of the past from happening again. Unfortunately, neo-fascism and
Russophobia are gaining momentum in some corners of the world. Before
taking any measures, we should think of their aftermath. We should
be tolerant and respect each other. This is how we can change the
world for the better,” said Putin.

OBAMA V THE KARDASHIANS: WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO CALL 1.5 MILLION ARMENIAN DEATHS IN 1915 ‘GENOCIDE’ DESPITE KIM’S CAMPAIGN

daily Mail, UK
April 22 2015

In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks in what
historians have described as the first genocide of the 20th century
Obama refused to call the mass killings a ‘genocide’ in official
statement despite promising as a presidential candidate that he would
Turkish officials furiously deny there was a genocide, and Obama has
shied away from offending the close U.S. ally Kim Kardashian – who
is Armenian on her father’s side – and the Pope have both called the
killings a genocide Kasdashian last week traveled to the country for
the first time with her husband Kanye West, sister Khole and cousins
Kara and Kourtni The White House will be sending Treasury Secretary
Jacob Lew to Armenia this week to mark the 100th anniversary of
the killings

By Francesca Chambers For Dailymail.com and Associated Press

Published: 22:00 GMT, 21 April 2015 | Updated: 21:21 GMT, 22 April 2015

President Barack Obama will once again stop short of calling the 1915
massacre of Armenians a genocide, prompting anger and disappointment
from those who have been pushing him to use the politically fraught
term.

As a candidate for president in 2008, Obama promised to use the term
to describe the mass murder if elected but has not followed through
despite calls from the most famous Armenian-American, Kim Kardashian,
and the Pope for the world to recognize the killings as a genocide.

Kardashian, whose Armenian heritage comes from her father, the late
Robert Kardashian, has used her celebrity since at least 2011 to
bring awareness to the genocide.

She last week traveled to the country for the first time with
her husband Kanye West, sister Khloe and cousins Kara and Kourtni
Kardashian.

‘An emotional day at the genocide museum,’ read a tweet posted by
Kim that was accompanied by a photo of her and Khloe laying flowers
at the Dzidzernagapert Armenian Genocide monument’s eternal flame.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama did describe the
killings of Armenians as genocide. But he has never used that
description since taking office, mainly out of deference to Turkey,
a key U.S. partner.

Top administration officials discussed the decision with
Armenian-American leaders Tuesday.

The White House said U.S. officials pledged to Armenian-American
leaders that the U.S. would use this week’s 100th anniversary of the
killings ‘to urge a full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts,’
but a statement about the meeting did not include the word ‘genocide.’

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman
Turks, an event widely viewed by scholars as a genocide.

Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide because
it was not an ethnic-driven battle and says the death toll has been
inflated.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said yesterday he was ‘deeply disappointed’
by the president’s decision.

‘The United States has long prided itself for being a beacon of human
rights, for speaking out against atrocity, for confronting painful
chapters of its own past and that of others,’ said Schiff. ‘This
cannot be squared with a policy of complicity in genocide denial by
the president or Congress.’

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman
Turks, an event widely viewed by scholars as a genocide.

Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide because
it was not an ethnic-driven battle and says the death toll has been
inflated.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said yesterday he was ‘deeply disappointed’
by the president’s decision.

‘The United States has long prided itself for being a beacon of human
rights, for speaking out against atrocity, for confronting painful
chapters of its own past and that of others,’ said Schiff. ‘This
cannot be squared with a policy of complicity in genocide denial by
the president or Congress.’

Khloe wrote in a tweet on the day of their visit to the genocide
memorial: ‘My sister and I are trying to bring awareness not only to
our Armenian genocide but genocides and human slaughter, in general.

Knowledge is power!’

She kept the campaign going after she returned home, asking her fan
base on Twitter to sign a Change.org petition ‘to bring awareness to
the Armenian genocide’ by requesting that Google highlight the conflict
with its homepage doodle on the anniversary of the killings, April 24.

‘I did!!!’ she said.

As of Wednesday morning the online petition had more than 175,300
supporters and was less than 25,000 signatures away from it’s goal
of collecting 200,000 names.

‘The Kardashians have helped strike a powerful blow at Turkey’s
campaign of genocide denial,’ ANCA communications director told ABC
News after the visit.

Their trip to Armenia ‘has helped shine a global spotlight’ on the
genocide and ‘the need for justice for that crime with millions,’
she said.

REMARKS BY NEW YORK MAYOR ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CENTENNIAL

21:55, 24 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

The Mayor of New York Bill De Blasio has issued a statement on the
occasion of the Centennial of theArmenian Genocide:

“Today, we commemorate the Meds Yeghern and honor those who perished
in the Armenian genocide 100 years ago in one of the worst atrocities
of the 20th century, when over a million Armenians were subjected to
state-sanctioned murder, rape and massive forced deportations.

For many Armenians in New York City and around the world, this
historical trauma is compounded by Turkey’s refusal to recognize the
devastation inflicted upon the Armenian people as an act of genocide.

Pope Francis spoke of this in a recent sermon, and it bears repeating
on this painful anniversary: There cannot be closure on an atrocity
of this magnitude if we do not call it by its name.

The bravery of a new generation of Turks – who are challenging those
in their country who deny this tragedy – is an encouraging step toward
long overdue justice and reconciliation. Against today’s background
of rising religious intolerance, we must take this solemn occasion
to reflect on the past – and to directly confront the discrimination
of the present.”

FRIDAY MARKS CENTENNIAL OF ARMENIAN MASS KILLINGS DURING WORLD WAR I

WFAE 90.7
April 22 2015

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Even as the Obama White House announced its observance of the
centennial, its press release spoke of atrocities and avoided the
use of the word genocide – that, despite President Obama having run
on the issue that what happened to the Armenians should be spoken of
as genocide. Well, the American writer Peter Balakian has studied our
country’s response to those events a hundred years ago. Back in 2003,
he wrote “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide And America’s
Response.” He joins us from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.,
where he’s a professor of English. Welcome to the program.

PETER BALAKIAN: Thank you.

SIEGEL: First, a vocabulary lesson, please. The word genocide was
coined in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ extermination campaign against
the Jews. That’s about 30 years after the slaughter of the Armenians.

Is the case for using it to describe what happened to the Armenians
ironclad?

BALAKIAN: Yes, well, Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal scholar
who developed the term genocide and who is the father of the U.N.

Genocide Convention of 1948 – his thinking about genocide begins with
the Armenian massacres of 1915, and he writes about that at length.

It’s Lemkin who first coined the term Armenian genocide around
mid-1940s. And you see him on CBS News in February of 1949 talking very
precisely about the Armenian genocide. So it’s Lemkin’s conceptual
notion, I think, that the Armenian genocide is the cornerstone of
the concept of genocide in the modern era.

SIEGEL: One complication here is there actually were mass murderers –
massacres against Armenians dating back to the 1890s in the Ottoman
Empire, and those are not called the Armenian genocide.

BALAKIAN: Well, you know, I think that one could conceptualize the
history of the mass killing of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as
something that evolves along what the sociologist Ervin Staub calls a
continuum of destruction. The Armenian massacres of the 1890s, which
were putative – they were punishments for Armenian progressive reform
movement. They weren’t designed to exterminate the entire population
or rid the Ottoman Empire of its Armenian population, but they begin
a very important process of devaluing and dehumanizing this ethnic
minority group.

SIEGEL: What’s different by 1950 – and you’ve reported on the documents
that show it – was the planning, the policy, the bureaucracy that
went into the mass murder of Armenians.

BALAKIAN: I think that the Ottoman government’s final solution for
the Armenian people of Turkey represented a shift in organized,
state-planned mass killing. The Ottoman government was able to
expedite its mass killing of a targeted minority population in a
concentrated period of time. So it’s important to realize that the
Ottoman government murdered more than a million Armenians between
1915 and 1916 alone – perhaps 1.2 million is the number you come to
by the end of the summer of 1916.

SIEGEL: You wrote about the American response to what was happening to
the Armenians starting in the 1890s. There’s really a seminal moment
for an American conscience about what’s going on in the world and the
abuses of human rights. You would say this really is the beginning
of our concern about other people in the world.

BALAKIAN: That’s right. I mean, I think what’s interesting here
is that there was a grassroots movement among ordinary Americans
who were giving money for rescue and relief during their church and
synagogue collection plates on Saturdays and Sundays. And there was
also a movement among elites, among intellectuals – and of course this
is an important context for understanding American relief projects
for the Armenians during the genocide period. For the first time,
Americans go overseas to do relief and rescue work. And this happened
under the auspices of Clara Barton, the director of the Red Cross,
who, for the first time, would take her teams 8,000 miles away to
the Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire to do rescue and relief
work. And that is really a milestone moment. And I think this is the
beginning of a kind of new internationalism in American culture.

SIEGEL: Professor Balakian, thanks for talking with us today.

BALAKIAN: Thanks for having me.

SIEGEL: Peter Balakian is the author of “The Burning Tigris:
The Armenian Genocide And America’s Response.” The book’s Turkish
translation will be published later this year. Transcript provided
by NPR, Copyright NPR.

ARMENIANS IN BAGHDAD HOLD PROTEST MARCH TO TURKISH EMBASSY

17:49 24/04/2015 ” POLITICS

In the framework of the Armenian Genocide Centennial events, the
Armenians of Baghdad have marched towards the Turkish Embassy in
protest against the policy of denial of Turkey, the Facebook page of
the Armenian diocese of Iraq reports.

More than 500 Armenians, with the guidance of the leader of the
Armenian diocese of Iraq, Archbishop Avag Asaturyan, and accompanied
by the representatives of the National Central Department and priests,
have held a protest march towards the Turkish Embassy.

Reaching the Embassy of Turkey, the Chairman of the National Central
Department, Melkon Melkonian, read the protest statement of the
Iraqi Armenians addressed to the authorities of Turkey which was
later pasted on the Embassy walls.

The protest statement was also handed to the local news media which
in their turn widely covered the topic.

It is noted that this is the first case in the history of the Iraqi
Armenian community that such a large-scale event is held.

CNN: 8 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE MASS KILLINGS OF ARMENIANS 100 YEARS AGO

20:24, 24 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

As Armenians worldwide mark the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide, the CNN presents eight facts that should be known about
the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

What preceded the mass killings of Armenians that began 100 years ago?

The Ottoman Turks, having recently entered World War I on the side of
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were worried that Armenians
living in the Ottoman Empire would offer wartime assistance to Russia.

Russia had long coveted control of Constantinople (now Istanbul),
which controlled access to the Black Sea — and therefore access to
Russia’s only year-round seaports.

How many Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire at the start of the
mass killings?

Many historians agree that the number was about 2 million. However,
victims of the mass killings also included some of the 1.8 million
Armenians living in the Caucasus under Russian rule, some of whom
were massacred by Ottoman forces in 1918 as they marched through East
Armenia and Azerbaijan.

How did the mass killings start?

By 1914, Ottoman authorities were already portraying Armenians as a
threat to the empire’s security. Then, on the night of April 23-24,
1915, the authorities in Constantinople, the empire’s capital, rounded
up about 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. Many of
them ended up deported or assassinated.

April 24, known as Red Sunday, is commemorated as Genocide Remembrance
Day by Armenians around the world. Friday is the 100th anniversary
of that day.

How many Armenians were killed?

This is a major point of contention. Estimates range from 300,000 to 2
million deaths between 1914 and 1923, with not all of the victims in
the Ottoman Empire. But most estimates — including one of 800,000
between 1915 and 1918, made by Ottoman authorities themselves —
fall between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

Whether due to killings or forced deportation, the number of Armenians
living in Turkey fell from 2 million in 1914 to under 400,000 by 1922.

How did they die?

Almost any way one can imagine.

While the death toll is in dispute, photographs from the era document
some mass killings. Some show Ottoman soldiers posing with severed
heads, others with them standing amid skulls in the dirt.

The victims are reported to have died in mass burnings and by
drowning, torture, gas, poison, disease and starvation. Children were
reported to have been loaded into boats, taken out to sea and thrown
overboard. Rape, too, was frequently reported.

In addition, according to the website armenian-genocide.org, “The great
bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and
Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert
to die of thirst and hunger.”

Was genocide a crime at the time of the killings?

No. Genocide was not even a word at the time, much less a legally
defined crime.

The word “genocide” was invented in 1944 by a Polish lawyer named
Raphael Lemkin to describe the Nazis’ systematic attempt to eradicate
Jews from Europe. He formed the word by combining the Greek word for
race with the Latin word for killing.

Pope Francis recently referred to the killings of Armenians as a
“genocide,” a move that upset Turkey.

Genocide became a crime in 1948, when the United Nations approved the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The definition included acts meant “to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Who calls the mass killings of Armenians a genocide?

Armenia, the Vatican, the European Parliament, France, Russia and
Canada. Germany is expected to join that group on Friday, the 100th
anniversary of the start of the killings.

Who does not call the mass killings a genocide?

Turkey, the United States, the European Commission, the United Kingdom
and the United Nations.

A U.N. subcommittee called the killings genocide in 1985, but current
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declines to use the word.

UNE VEILLEE DES JEUNES REUSSIE AVANT LE GRAND RASSEMBLEMENT D’AUJOURD’HUI

Paris

“Ca y est, 23 avril 2015, nous y sommes” : Eve-Anne prend la parole sur
une estrade dressee sur la place de la Republique. Derrière elle, les
lettres “justice et reparation” ont ete tagguees a la peinture rouge en
bas de la statue de la Republique, devenue symbole de memoire. Avec un
badge “Je me bats pour la justice / 100 ans” epingle sur son tailleur,
elle prend la parole au nom de toute la jeunesse armenienne venue,
comme chaque annee depuis 10 ans, se rassembler a la veille de la
grande manifestation devant la statue du Père Komitas.

Dix associations ont fusionne pour organiser l’evenement : AYO,
COPEA, DA-COnnexion, Homenetmen France, la JAF Paris, Naregatsi,
Nazarpek Jeunesse Hentchakian, FRA Nor Seround, UCJA et l’UGAB Jeunes.

Anaïd, benevole pour l’organisation de la veillee de la jeunesse
armenienne.

Un siècle après le debut du genocide des Armeniens, des centaines
de personnes sont venues se souvenir ensemble. Drapeau rouge, bleu
et orange sur le dos, Arthur explique que “pour nous, petit-fils de
genocides, le devoir de memoire est important. Mais il ne faut pas
oublier qu’on est la aussi pour les autres genocides”.

La pianiste Varduhi Yeritsyan, qui a commence le programme musical
avec Komitas.

La programmation musicale le rappelle. Après les emouvantes prestations
de la pianiste Varduhi Yeritsyan – qui a elle-meme contacter les jeunes
pour etre la – et du joueur de doudouk Levon Khozian, ce sont deux
anciens talents de The Voice qui viennent chanter sur scène. Pour le
souriant Alvy Zalme, congolais de la 4e saison du tele-crochet, “c’est
important d’etre ici pour la paix, pour l’humain avant tout. La musique
est federatrice et doit defendre certaine cause juste. Aujourd’hui,
ce sont les Armeniens qui mettent en avant leur histoire longtemps
oubliee, demain ce sera peut-etre mon pays, le Congo”.

Alvy Zalme, avant de monter sur la scène de la place de la Republique.

Le >, composee de panneaux explicatifs sur
l’Armenie et les genocides dans le monde, est regarde par des milliers
de personnes, Armeniens ou simple passant intrigue. Anna, 12 ans,
montre du doigt une carte en demandant des explications a son père.

Une demarche de transmission importante pour David Yegavian, venu
avec sa femme Emilie qui a epouse la cause armenienne en meme temps
que son mari. “Nos enfants apprendront notre histoire : il ne faut
jamais oublier ca, affirme celui qui a accroche un drapeau armenien
sur son haut. C’est pour ca qu’il est important que les Armeniens de
France, mais aussi les Francais de France, se reunissent”.

David, d’origine armenienne, et Emilie, sa femme, qui a appris a
connaître la cause armenienne par son mari.

Entre une conference de Gaïdz Minassian et Tro Momajian sur “la
question armenienne dans les relations internationales”, des prises
de parole et des concerts, cette veillee des jeunes a ete une vraie
reussite. En attendant le grand rendez-vous en presence du Premier
ministre, Manuel Valls, et la maire de Paris, Anne Hidalgo, ce soir
devant la statue Komitas.

Plus de 500 personnes etaient presents.

vendredi 24 avril 2015, Claire (c)armenews.com

________________________________

Claire Barbuti

KNESSET MEMBER CRITICIZING ISRAELI GOVERNMENT FOR DENYING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

by Ashot Safaryan

Friday, April 24, 17:54

The Jerusalem Post reports that MK members Nacman Shai and Anat Berko
are representing Israel at the commemoration event of genocide victims
in Yerevan.

“I am proud to represent the State of Israel and the Jewish people
at this historic event,”Shai said in a conversation with Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan.”We understand, perhaps more than any other
people, the pain and suffering of the Armenian people and we share in
this terrible tragedy with you.” During her April 24 speech leader
of party “Merets” Zakhava Galon said “the delegation cannot change
the fact the Israeli government is still a part of the Armenian
Genocide denial”.

“Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tasked the delegation to consider
the Armenian Genocide as a tragedy, but not speak about it as a murder
of a nation”.

According to her, “the Jewish nation, which underwent Holocaust,
knows the meaning of Holocaust denial and still struggles against
that denial, is morally obliged to be sensitive towards other nations
without denying genocides that have and are taking place”.

STEINMEIER: ARMENIA WASN’T GENOCIDE

The Local, Germany
April 24 2015

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted on Friday that
calling Armenian massacres genocide risks belittling the Holocaust,
after President Joachim Gauck broke a taboo by using the word on
Thursday.

Steinmeier stuck to his guns on Friday, arguing in an interview
with Spiegel that “We in Germany need to be careful not to give
justification to those who follow their own political agenda and say
the Holocaust started before 1933.'”

“I’m tired of debates in which I’m expected to jump over a stick
which is being held out for me, although everyone knows that complex
memories can rarely be brought together under one word,” the foreign
minister said.

“The simple reduction of this debate to the question of whether we
describe it as genocide or not” doesn’t help “end the silence that
persists between Turks and Armenians.”

Steinmeier has come in for fierce criticism this week, with one
high profile politician comparing him to Germany’s First World War
leadership.

Both Gauck and Bundestag (German parliament) president Norbert Lammert
condemned the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces a
century ago as a “genocide”, the first time Germany has officially
used the term.

Gauck’s speech at an event commemorating the centenary marked the first
time that Berlin has officially used the word “genocide” to describe
the killings in Armenia, and an unusually strong acknowledgement of
the then German Empire’s role.

“In this case we Germans must come to terms with the past regarding
our shared responsibility, possibly shared guilt, for the genocide
against the Armenians,” he said at the ecumenical service in Berlin.

He was joined in using the word genocide by Bundestag (German
parliament) president Norbert Lammert.

Lammert opened a debate on Armenia in the chamber by saying that
“what happened in the Ottoman Empire before the eyes of the world
was a genocide. It did not remain the last one of the 20th Century.

“That makes our obligation not to repress or gloss over the crimes
committed then that much bigger, out of respect for the victims and
with responsibility for cause and effect.”

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed between 1915
and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart and have long sought
to win international recognition of the massacres as genocide.

Modern Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, rejects the
claim, arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks
died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman
rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

Gauck’s statement was expected to draw an angry reaction from Ankara,
which has close defence and trade ties with Berlin.

Germany also has a three-million-strong ethnic Turkish population
deriving from a massive “guest worker” programme in the 1960s and
1970s.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said earlier Thursday that
a decision by Austrian lawmakers this week to condemn the massacre as
“genocide” would have “unfavourable repercussions” for bilateral ties.

Gauck, a Protestant pastor and former East German dissident, is the
head of state and serves as a kind of moral arbiter for the nation.

Nazis banned book

In his speech at the Berlin Cathedral, Gauck said that particularly
given Nazi Germany’s slaughter of six million Jews during World War
II, for which Berlin has publicly atoned for decades, it must also
own up to its historical guilt in the Armenian mass murders.

“Woman and men, children and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on
death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe
and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten and shot to death,”
he said.

“This planned and calculated criminal act targeted the Armenians for
a sole reason: because they were Armenians.”

Gauck said that the German empire, then allied with the Ottomans,
deployed soldiers who took part in “planning and, in part, carrying
out the deportations”.

German diplomats and observers who reported back to Berlin the
atrocities they witnessed were “ignored” for fear of jeopardising
relations with the Ottomans, he said.

Gauck said that the Nazis even banned an Austrian novel about the
mass murders but that the book was read in Jewish ghettos in the 1930s
“as a harbinger of what was to come for the Jews”.

He said it was impossible to walk away from guilt through “denial,
repression or trivialisation” of history.

“We in Germany learned the hard way, in part by shameful
procrastination, to remember the crimes of the Nazi era, above all
the persecution and extermination of European Jews,” he said.

The presidents of Russia and France – two of nearly two dozen countries
to formally recognise the genocide – are to join a handful of world
leaders attending a commemoration of the massacre in the Armenian
capital Yerevan on Friday.

Germany plans to send a junior foreign minister to the event.

While Gauck clearly labelled the mass murders a genocide, the German
government has backed a compromise resolution to be debated on Friday
in parliament.

“Their fate exemplifies the history of the mass murders, ethnic
cleansing campaigns, expulsions, indeed the genocides that marked the
20th century in such a horrible way,” reads the draft text obtained
by AFP on Monday.

RUSSIAN ACTOR TO TURKS: HAVE COURAGE AND ASK FOR FORGIVENESS (VIDEO)

14:06 | April 24,2015 | Politics

People’s Artist of Russia, Alexander Goloborodko, cannot understand
why the Turkish government has not been able to accept the truth and
apologize to Armenians for the 1915 Genocide by Ottoman Empire.

“There is nothing terrible in it. They only need to say, “Forgive us
and let us leave everything in the past.” But they [Turks] are afraid
to do it. I cannot understand the reasons for Turkey’s resistance,”
says the actor.

“Recognition of the Armenian Genocide does not step from Turkey’s
interests,” says Alexander Semchev, Honored Artist of the Russian
Federation. “Very often, we do not want to admit our faults and
misdeeds. Perhaps, it is much easier in politics. You can make a
fool of yourself and say that you have not committed any crime. But
there are facts and evidence and you cannot but admit them. Well,
you have committed a heinous crime and now have courage to ask for
forgiveness,” he said.

People’s Artist of Russia, Alexander Korshunov, says the entire world
should recognize the Armenian Genocide to exclude the repetition of
the crime in the future.

For more details watch the video of the Union of Armenians of Russia.