Author: Kanayan Tamar

Assyria Times
The Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Genocides: An Inconvenient Truth
3/15/2010 22:19:00
By Lucine Kasbarian
es/news/article.php?storyid=3D3409

Recent articles in the mainstream media would have us believe that
governments around the world somehow question the factuality of the
1915 Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides committed by Turkey. These
articles would also have us believe that the Turkish government’s
latest temper tantrums over these genocides are justified. Turkey, of
course, just recalled its ambassadors to protest the passage of
resolutions by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs
Committee and the Swedish Parliament that acknowledged Turkish
culpability for these genocides.

Despite what today’s mainstream media are declaring, the evidence
proving the 1915 genocides is overwhelming. And formal resolutions
affirming these unpunished crimes against humanity made appearances
around the world long before 2010. Regardless of what pro-Turkish
apologists would have us believe, the issue has never been about
whether the Turkish regime carried out genocide. Rather, it has always
been about when Turkey would be punished and deliver reparations and
restitution to the rightful, indigenous inhabitants.

Powerful media elites would have us believe that the mainstream media
universe has been devoid of criticism for Turkey’s unpunished crimes
because such voices are either non-existent, marginal, irrelevant,
fabricated or some combination thereof.

What the media elites fail to tell us is that when these critical
voices — from victim ethnic groups or elsewhere — come forward to
submit letters, opinion pieces, or quotes, they are usually denied
access.

Media elites also neglect to tell us that opinions that do not reflect
the official narrative spun by Turkey — not to mention Israel and the
U.S. — largely go unpublished. Authoritative voices that would
discredit mainstream media’s official narrative of the genocide issue
are removed from the elite’s `golden rolodex’ — the name given to
describe the small group of establishment-approved `experts’ who are
most frequently quoted in news stories or asked to appear on
television.

The absence of dissent in the mainstream media and in the halls of
power does not mean that the victims of the genocides and their
descendants are insignificant, apathetic or deceitful. No, we are
alive, awake and infuriated.

The media are also telling us that we should sympathize with Turkey
because it feels `humiliated’ by accusations of genocide. Turkey uses
this word to describe its anger that its national honor has somehow
been injured by such accusations. Do Turkish, Israeli and American
officials know what `humiliation’ means to the survivors and
descendants of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides who
experienced debasement and degradation during the genocidal ordeals
and are forced to endure denials and demeaning treatment right up to
the present day?

And how did humiliation of the victims occur? By order of the Young
Turk regime, unarmed civilian subjects — Armenian, Assyrian and Greek
men, women and children — were raped in broad daylight, in front of
their families and neighbors. The tortures and violations were beyond
one’s wildest imagination. Innocents were skinned and burned
alive. Their tongues and fingernails were torn out. Horseshoes were
nailed to their feet. They were stripped naked and sent on death
marches into the desert. Women’s breasts were cut off and their
pregnant bellies bayoneted. Fetuses were thrown up into the air and
impaled on swords and bayonets for sport. Men were tied to tree limbs
that were bent towards one another. When the tree’s limbs were
released, the men’s bodies were torn in half. Women were tied to
horses and dragged to their deaths.

Those Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks who were not exterminated,
enslaved in harems, or kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam were
driven from their indigenous lands. Those who survived the death
marches spent the rest of their lives in exile, uprooted from their
culture and civilization, grieving for their slaughtered families and
yearning for their ancestral homeland.

Media elites are giving voice to embroidered Turkish `humiliation’ and
not to the real humiliation of the victims, survivors and heirs who
live with constant anguish in the face of torture, dispossession,
contempt and indifference. Media elites are defending Turkey when it
is the martyrs and their heirs who deserve mercy and compassion.

In spite of Turkey’s efforts to humiliate the victims at the time of
the genocides — and to prolong this humiliation up to the present day
with cultural theft, trivialization and scape-goating — the dignity
of the victims and their descendants has, remarkably, remained intact.

Turkey’s genocidal crimes have gone unpunished. While continually
profiting from the homes, farms, lands, properties, institutions and
possessions confiscated in 1915, Turkey even accuses the victims and
survivors of the crimes that it itself committed. And media elites
portray ongoing survivor grievances as nuisances that impede
`progress.’

It is the genocide deniers — the rulers and lobbies of the U.S.,
Turkey, Israel, and Azerbaijan — who are the ones impeding
progress. Their denial, duplicity and audacity do not mean that the
genocides’ victims and their heirs have been defeated. Denying the
truth does not invalidate it. Fictional Turkish `reconciliation’
initiatives foisted upon Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks will never
take the place of genuine atonement and restitution, which are
necessary for true progress to be made.

To these deniers and obstructionists we say: `Your tactics are
transparent. The perpetrators, beneficiaries and enablers of the
ongoing genocide against the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek peoples will
be brought to justice. You can hide from the truth, but you can’t hide
the truth. We will persist, and the truth will prevail.’

—-

Lucine Kasbarian is a descendant of Armenian and Assyrian genocide
victims and survivors, and the author of Armenia: A Rugged Land, an
Enduring People (Dillon Press/Simon & Schuster)

ARMENIANS OF UKRAINE THANK SWEDISH PARLIAMENT

PanARMENIAN.Net
15.03.2010 12:14 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenians of Ukraine are thankful to the members
of Parliament of Sweden (the Riksdag) for adoption of a resolution
recognizing the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, said Ashot
Avanesyan, President of the National Congress of Armenians of Ukraine.

"We will always remember your historical decision," the Congress said
in a letter to the Riksdag members, Analitika.at.ua reported.

On March 11, the Swedish parliament passed the resolution on
recognition of the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and
Pontiac Greeks with a vote 131-130.

Azg, Armenia
March 12 2010

WILL ARMENIA PARTICIPATE IN THE SUMMIT OF THE WORLD RELIGIOUS LEADERS IN BAKU?

Chairman of Caucasian Muslims Office, sheikh-ul-islam Haji Allahshukur
Pashazadeh said Baku summit will be held on April 27-29.

"About 150 religious leaders will attend the event. Each of them
brings together millions of people in a state. 11 patriarchs from the
Catholic Church will attend the summit. The representatives of the
traditional religions will attend the summit," he said, according to
APA.

According to the source, Allahshukur Pashazadeh did not exclude that
Armenian Catholicos Garegin II would be invited to the summit.

"CIS Interreligious Council includes the religious leaders of all
countries. I am the co-chair of the council. As far as I know,
Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill will visit Armenia soon.
During the visit he will probably invite Garegin to the Baku summit. I
do not see anything unusual in this invitation" he said.

Torture and the crimes of history:
not too much masochism pleaseOpenness and transparency exact a price
in terms of public confidence in institutions, a price that may
eventually lead to a reaction

Michael White
Wednesday 10 March 2010 11.06 GMT
guardian.co.uk

What caught my eye in today’s papers was not ex-M15 head Eliza
Manningham-Buller’s admission that she was ignorant of the Bush
administration’s 9/11 torture policy, welcome though that was. No, it
was Lizzy Davies’s report that light is finally being shown on a far
more shameful chapter in French history.

You probably know a little about it, as most French people do – and
will now know more because of the acclaimed new film, La Rafle du Vel
d’Hiv – The Winter Velodrome Raid. Jacques Chirac apologised for what
happened in 1995, but it has always been murky.

The film tells the story of the 1942 round-up by French police of
13,000 French Jews and their dispatch to their deaths, most of them,
in German concentration camps. They were held initially at the sports
site in the Paris suburbs; hence the film’s name.

There’s no point in being smug about this. The story of the German
occupation of France is complex, full of heroism as well as shades of
villainy and complicity – as director Rose Bosch shows in her film.

No, the question is one of transparency, of confronting our own
uncomfortable past, collective and personal. It’s never easy. France
buried the occupation after the liberation of 1944, as Spain did its
own civil war horrors – until very recently.

Marcel Ophüls’s The Sorrow and the Pity attempted to address crucial
issues, including collaboration and antisemitism ("better Hitler than
[the French Jewish politician Léon] Blum" was a slogan of the 30s), in
1969. It was banned on French TV until 1981.

Would the British have done any better if occupied? Do we sufficiently
confront our own past? Tricky questions, as last night’s
Manningham-Buller speech to a meeting in the House of Lords
underlines.

"We did lodge a protest," she said without further elaboration.

The Americans are our allies and we were facing a terrorist threat
whose scope and power we could not easily judge. The Bush White House
opted for the doubtful expediency of waterboarding and other
practices, many of which must be regarded as torture.

What did we know and when did we know it, are questions the Guardian
and others have been asking.

Similar dilemmas were agonised over the western alliance with Stalin
in 1941-45. By then enough was known about the Great Terror and other
horrors to make the partnership an act of uneasy expediency.

Ah yes, but what about our own crimes? 20th century dictators
sometimes claimed only to be taking the racist and imperialist
fantasies of the "liberal democracies" to a more robust conclusion
because they were in a hurry to catch up. Alas, there is some truth in
it.

Did we not learn during the Haiti earthquake that vicious reparations
(for the loss of slave property and land) imposed by republican France
helped cripple the island state for most of its history? What about
British troops’ conduct during the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya? And in
the bloody retreat from Aden, now Yemen, in 1968, about which the
Times has been reporting lately?

By coincidence this week has seen two stabs at important revisionism
come to my attention. On Radio 4’s Today programme an Indian
politician and historian called Jaswant Singh discussed his book on
Muhammed Ali Jinnah with expat British writer William Dalrymple. The
founder of Pakistan has been "horrifyingly caricatured" by history,
according to Dalrymple.

I don’t know the truth of the matter, but had always gone along with
the consensus that made Gandhi and Nehru the heroes of Indian
independence in 1947, and the intractable Jinnah the bad guy who
insisted on a separate Muslim state, now two, where federalism would
have been a better solution.

Singh, who must be a Sikh (millions were forced to flee Pakistani
Punjab), says otherwise, that the usual mixture of miscalculation,
impatience (not least bankrupt Britain’s to quit India), and
personalities all played their part. Needless to say his book has been
attacked in Hindu India and its author ostracised.

Our version comes from Freedom at Midnight, with which Lord
Mountbatten, the last viceroy, cooperated, Dalrymple explained. It is
also the basis for Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning biopic Gandhi,
where General Reginald Dyer (Edward Fox) gets a kicking for his role
in the 1919 Amritsar massacre.

There was a lot of trouble at home and in India about that. The
official inquiry said 379 demonstrators were shot by British troops,
200 injured. Indians put the figure at 1,000 dead, 500 injured. The
issue is unresolved except in the sense that it contributed to the
loss of authority which was fast destroying the Raj.

The second controversy worth checking out is far vaster in scale: the
Turkish massacres of Armenians within the tottering Ottoman empire in
1915 that Norman Stone, brilliant and provocative as ever, asserts was
not genocide. Readers take him to task on the need to confront the
past today.

Brilliant he may be, but I suspect that Stone, an ex-Oxford history
professor now teaching in Ankara, is overstating his case for the
defence for an ethnic cleansing policy in which an alleged 1.5 million
people died.

But the issue reverberates today because the US Congress and the EU
are threatening a major rift with the key Nato ally in the region by
pressing genocidal guilt on the Middle East’s only successful, secular
Muslim state – just as it totters between east and west, Islam and
modernity.

Just so Muhammed Ali Jinnah’s reputation. India heads for 10% annual
growth and superpower status while Pakistan is – to quote an
Anglo-Asian playwright – "sodomised by religion" and other problems.
Divided Kashmir, part of the legacy of 1947, remains a focus of
profound tensions expressed in 2008’s Mumbai bombs.

And little old us? My working assumption is that Britain has
confronted its imperial demons better than France, partly because
history was kinder, partly because the Anglo-Saxons have a stronger
instinct for what we now call openness and transparency.

So it is hard to imagine Pontecorvo’s great 1966 film The Battle of
Algiers doing as well at the Cannes film festival so close to the
Algerian war it brutally depicts (torture and all) as the
Oscar-winning Hurt Locker and films like it have done so close to the
Iraq war. Indeed, it was banned for five years.

But openness and transparency exact a price in terms of public
confidence in institutions, a price that may eventually lead to a
reaction. So my other hunch is that in Britain we have reached a stage
where we may just be overdoing the masochism strategy, the
self-flagellation, in our dissection of this and many aspects of
public policy. The destruction of trust is corrosive.

In matters of knowledge, complicity and cover-ups involving sexual
abuse of children, popes, past and present, have a great deal more to
account for than Manningham-Buller, the current pope’s brother too
judging by today’s reports from that Catholic boarding school in
Bavaria.

But the Catholic church knows how to take the long view, keep things
in perspective and play hardball when it has to. That must be why it’s
still standing.

TUSK IN ARMENIA FOR EASTERN PARTNERSHIP TALKS

The News
7307_tusk-in-armenia-for-eastern-partnership-talks .html
March 12 2010
Poland

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has flown to Yerevan. Armenia in the last
leg of his four-day journey through the south Caucasus.

Previously, PM Tusk has had talks with heads of state in Azerbaijan
and Georgia.

In Yerevan, Donald Tusk will meet with President Serzh Sargsyan and
Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

The head of the Polish government will try to persuade Armenian
authorities to forge closer ties with the European Union.

On Thursday, in Tbilisi, he said that during the Polish six-month
presidency of the EU in the second half of 2011, Poland will prepare
a brief lifting of the EU visa scheme in countries targeted by the
Eastern Partnership programme.

The program includes the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Moldova and Belarus, conditionally. By 2013 Brussels wants to spend
approximately 600 million euros on the Eastern Partnership.

One of the topics for talks in Armenia is the conflict with Azerbaijan
over Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognised de facto independent state,
internationally understood to be under the control of Azerbaijan. On
Wednesday in Baku, Tusk called the problem a "Gordian knot" and
admitted that at this moment there is no chance of settling this
dispute.

This evening, Donald Tusk will return to Poland.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION: THE NEED FOR THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Diane Diniz

Visalia Times-Delta
March 11 2010
California

Most people have little or no understanding about the history of the
Armenian "genocide." It happened before the Holocaust, carried out
by the Turkish Ottoman Empire from 1915-1923, with an estimated death
toll of 1.5 million Armenians. The House of Foreign Affairs Committee
held a hearing March 4th on the Armenian Genocide Resolution, which
was passed with a 23-22 vote. Its potential for adoption now faces
a decision from the House floor, which is unlikely because of the
hearsay that the resolution will "alienate a NATO ally and trading
partner". Turkey condemned the resolution, stating that it accuses
Turkey of a crime that was never committed and recalled their U.S.

ambassador after the House Committee vote. Although the resolution
seems to be unpopular, the Armenian Prime Minister welcomed the vote
passed by the congressional panel and stated that this is "proof" from
the American people and their devotion to universal human rights and
"it is an important step" in prevention of crimes against humanity.

France, Canada, Russia, Chile, Switzerland, and a dozen other
countries have recognized the Armenian Genocide as well as the
European Parliament.

The Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.RES.252, which was introduced
March 17th of last year, calls upon the President "to ensure that the
foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding
and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic
cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record
relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes." In Obama’s
campaign he stated that he would "as president" recognize the Armenian
Genocide. Now his Administration opposes the resolution and will
"work very hard" to stop it from getting to the House floor. Sponsor
of the resolution is Representative Adam Schiff [CA-29], and among
137 other cosponsors is Devin Nunes [CA-21]. The acknowledgements
of the Armenian Genocide as U.S. Foreign Policy, is essential to the
commemoration of the Armenian people and for the remembrance of U.S.

opposition in the genocide.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, IAGS, wrote a
letter to the President in 2009 to recognize the Armenian Genocide,
as "it was the template for all modern genocide." The letter also
states that, Hitler was so impressed with the Turkish extermination
of the Armenian people that it shaped his own plans for genocide
as he said to his military advisors in 1939, "who today, after all,
remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?"

House of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Howard Berman, said that
as a world leader in promoting human rights, it is a moral obligation
of the United States to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide. "At
some point, every nation must come to terms with its own history,"
said the Chairman, "It is now time for Turkey to accept the reality of
the Armenian Genocide." To allow a foreign government to intimidate and
influence the American government to deny the massacre of millions of
people is not what our country is about. Recognizing and reconciling
with our past legacies, such as slavery and the treatment of Native
Americans, has brought eternal values of human rights to our culture.

/20100311/NEIGHBORHOODS02/3060346/Armenian+Genocid e+Resolution

SWEDEN ANGERS TURKEY WITH ‘GENOCIDE’ VOTE
By Jarle Hetland

European Voice
/sweden-angers-turkey-with-genocide-vote-/67406.as px
March 12 2010

Turkey withdraws its ambassador to Sweden in protest at Armenia vote.

A diplomatic row is brewing between Sweden and Turkey after Sweden’s
parliament yesterday voted to describe the 1915 killing of Armenians,
Assyrians, Greeks and Syrians by Turkey as ‘genocide’.

This morning, Sweden’s ambassador to Turkey was called to the Turkish
foreign ministry to explain the decision. Yesterday, Turkey recalled
its ambassador to Sweden and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime
minister, cancelled a planned visit to the Scandinavian country.

According to historians, up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
the Ottomans around the time of First World War, but Turkey denies
that the deaths constituted genocide, claiming that the death toll has
been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

The vote in Sweden has divided the country’s political parties ahead
of a general election later this year and is seen as a victory for
Sweden’s centre-left opposition. The vote was passed by 131 votes to
130 after four centre-right MPs voted with the centre-left.

Gulan Avci, a member of the centre-right Moderate Party who is of
Turkish decent and voted against her own party, said it was "time
for people who have suffered so long to obtain redress".

Hans Linde, a member of the Left Party, said it was not the role of
politicians to write history, but that they should "call things by
their right names".

Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s president, yesterday said that the resolution
approved by the Swedish parliament "did not have any credibility".

Zergun Koruturk, Turkey’s ambassador to Sweden, said she felt "very,
very betrayed" by the Swedish parliament.

Members of the Swedish government warned that the vote, which came a
week after the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee
approved a similar resolution, could affect trade between the two
countries.

Carl Bildt, the foreign minister, said that he regretted the
parliament’s decision: "It is wrong to politicise history in this way
and it will worsen Sweden’s possibilities to work for reconciliation
between the two sides."

According to Bildt, CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party, has now
demanded an end to ongoing reconciliation talks between Turkey and
Armenia. "This is exactly the type of consequence I feared," Bildt
said. "[The vote] is hijacked by elements hostile to reform in both
Turkey and Armenia.

But Bildt said he did not believe that the Swedish parliament’s vote
would affect Turkey’s EU membership bid.

‘TURKEY OF OUR DAYS MOSTLY DEPENDS ON THE OUTWARD FORCES’

Aysor
March 11 2010
Armenia

"Dozens of decades ago the process of recognition of Genocide [of
1915] has been starting in Europe. So, the similar situation to the
one at the U.S. Congress has taken place before," quotes DayAz agency
Azerbaijani deputy Sabyr Rustamkhanly commenting the approval of the
Resolution 252 by the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs
Committee.

Before the powers regarded Turkey, but now the situation has changed,
said politician: "This is not the same Turkey that Ataturk founded."

"Turkey of our days mostly depends on the outward forces. So it’s
not easy to say whether the U.S. Congress will pass the Resolution
on Genocide or not.

It’s worth mentioning that the House of Representatives Foreign
Affairs Committee passed on March 4 the Resolution, declaring mass
killings, deportations and executions, committed against Armenians,
in Turkey in 1915 as Genocide, by a vote of 23 to 22.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION WILL STRENGTHEN US’ POSITION IN SOUTH CAUCASUS REGION

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.03.2010 18:07 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ United Liberal National Party (ULNP) welcomes
US House Foreign Affairs Committee’s passage of Armenian Genocide
resolution: the party hopes H.Res. 252 will be included on Congress
agenda, ULNP secretary Vahan Babayan stated.

Possible passage of H.Res.252 in Congress might spell US’ intention to
strengthen its position in South Caucasus region. "With US recognizing
the Genocide, issues linked to changes in Armenia’s foreign policy
many occur," he noted.

In view of the above, Babayan noted, rumors about the visit of
Russian President or Prime Minister to Armenia are not accidental,
with Moscow trying to demonstrate that South Caucasus region is in
the center of its attention

Vahan Babayan forecasted certain progress in Armenia-Turkey
rapprochement before April 24, also stressing that unless Turkey
ratifies protocols until then, it will be the one responsible for
the failure of the process.

United Liberal National Party secretary was skeptical about Erdogan’s
statements on Turkey’s readiness to take return steps against US House
Foreign Affairs Committee decision. "In future, Turkey will have to
find common language with US and recognize the Armenian Genocide,"
he emphasized.

Dwelling on internal political situation in Armenia, Babayan noted that
statements on oncoming social riots in the country mustn’t be trusted.

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.

To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized
the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and
historians accept this view.

On March 4, with a vote of 23 to 22, the House Foreign Relations
Committee successfully passed House Resolution 252 (H. Res. 252)
pushing the Resolution in Congress for a final vote yet to be
scheduled.

SPANISH PARLIAMENT TO CONSIDER A RESOLUTION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

ArmInfo
2010-03-09 20:52:00

ArmInfo. The Spanish Parliament will consider a resolution on the
Armenian Genocide, Public Television of Armenia reports.

To remind, Feb 26 the Parliament of the Spanish province of Catalonia
unanimously voted for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.