REMEMBER THE ARMENIANS
al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
May 9 2014
Lubna Abdel Aziz
‘Outrage’ seems to be the word of the day! With a slightly artificial
tone, voices were raised in outrage at the death sentence of 528
vicious, lawless criminals, murderers, terrorists, butchers and
assassins. Not even as a token of taste did they exert any effort to
inquire about the reasons behind the Egyptian courts’ decision—how
many heinous crimes had they committed, how many human lives have
they taken, how savage, how truculent were their deeds!
With a decidedly serious bias, they challenged the Egyptian legal
system and its modus operandi, revealing a total ignorance of its
procedures. Nothing was expressed but outrage, outrage, outrage!
Following due process the number of death sentences was reduced to 39.
The reaction was total silence.
Another group of killers were sentenced by the same legal procedures
pertaining to the code of justice of this land, resulting in
more outrage. Some may find it a harsh decision it is a just one
nonetheless.
When hundreds of men, women and children were slaughtered by these
terrorists, there was no outrage.
When 21 Egyptian soldiers were kidnapped, hands tied behind their
backs, outstretched on the naked ground and shot through the head
more than once, where was the outrage?
When every member of the ‘Kirdassa’ police force were shot, then
slain, then dragged through the streets of the town, as the natives
hid behind closed doors, no one was outraged. These are only a few
incidents out of hundreds of horrific acts by those same criminals,
what punishment would you suggest?
Can those ‘outraged’ explain to judge and jury their attitude towards
the merciless killings of the innocents of a peaceful people overcome
with terror?
In very sentence pronounced by a judge in the name of a sovereign
nation, dwells the whole majesty of Justice! To the august character
of justice, all should bow!
The irony lies in those most outraged. The loud voices came from
Germany, yet the memory of the holocaust is still alive and well.
Another loud voice was that of the self-righteous Americans, bastions
of human rights! Are those rights reserved only for criminals? The
sight of the Ku Klux Klan cannot be forgotten. Racial discrimination
still lingers, despite a black president and his attorney general. Is
this sinister, ironic, sardonic or simply ludicrous?
The loudest voice expressing outrage came from Turkey, in which case
one can only call it laughable!
Remember the Armenians? Last week the Armenians commemorated the 99th
anniversary of the massacre of their race by the Turks in 1915.
It was called Red Sunday–April 24, 1915. Slowly, silently, in the
dark of night, all the Armenian intellectuals and community leaders
were rounded up and executed en masse. The date is known as ‘Genocide
Remembrance Day’, and that was only the beginning.
While the Turkish government offered its condolences to the Armenians
of this painful tragedy of mammoth proportions, the Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan dared to reject the charges of an Armenian
Genocide. In his rigid immobility he appeared hardly human as
he described it ‘as exaggerated accounts’ of those ‘enemies of
the Ottoman Empire’ and ‘casualties of a world war’ that did not
exceed 500,000… as if that were a trifling number of humans. Is
he ever conscious of his lack of humanity. “We are a people who
think genocide is a crime against humanity”, said the Turkish PM,
“and we would never turn an eye to such blind action”. Is there a
magic to vice that is irresistible? Who should be outraged now?
MEDZ YEGHERN, the Armenian name for’ Great Crime’, started during
WW1, as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart. It was the systematic
extermination of the minority population of Armenians from their
pre-historic homeland. Their only guilt is that of being different.
The able-bodied male population was forced into hard labour or outright
massacre. Women, children, the elderly, the sick were escorted by armed
Ottoman soldiers and marched through roads that led only to the Syrian
desert, hundreds of miles away. Deprived of food and water, subjected
to rape and robbery, hundreds of thousands perished. The New York
Times reported that: “the roads are strewn with the corpses of exiles.”
Every means of extermination was used against the Armenians. The
shortest method of disposing of women and children was to burn them.
Whole villages were burned to ashes, and Russians recall the odour of
burning human flesh permeated the air for days. Physicians, sworn to
save lives, were directly involved in the massacre, injecting those
slated for deportation with active blood of typhoid fever. Children
were sent to classrooms infused with toxic gas, or injected with
morphine. The purpose was to annihilate the Armenian race.
Armenians are descendants of a branch of the Indo-Europeans related to
the Phrygians who entered Asia Minor from Thrace. They call themselves
the Hayks and their country Hayasdan. The first state of Armenia was
established in the 6th Century BC, which extended from the Caucasus
to the present day Turkey, Lebanon and northern Iran. It succumbed
to several invasions and was part of the Roman Empire, and later the
Mameluks in the 16th Century. They formed the Alphabet in 405 which
ushered in the Golden Age of Armenia. The ancient Armenian culture
excelled in painting, sculpture and architecture. Around 11 million
in number worldwide, Armenians have preserved their culture, language,
religion and traditions to this day, despite their Diaspora and their
martyrdom at the hands of their fellow man!
“If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of
porcupines at you”
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1972)
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/6128/44/Remember-the-Armenians-.aspx