Liberation , France
22 Avril 2006
Armenie. Editorial
Piège
par Pierre HASKI
QUOTIDIEN : samedi 22 avril 2006
Le piège de la memoire est en train de se refermer. La controverse
entourant le memorial du genocide armenien de Lyon lance l’une contre
l’autre deux communautes a l’identite forte et fière, qui avancent
avec des points de vue irreconciliables. Les uns s’appuient sur leur
memoire de descendants de rescapes, et sur la loi francaise qui
reconnaît le genocide armenien ; les autres, sur une ecriture de leur
histoire occultant les faits, au point d’avoir vu defiler dans les
rues lyonnaises des manifestants turcs portant une insupportable
pancarte negationniste. Cette confrontation se retrouve dans d’autres
secteurs de la societe francaise, où le choc de memoires divergentes
et d’identites froissees se revèle regulièrement explosif. Le fameux
“devoir de memoire”, legitimement ne de la prise de conscience du
genocide juif après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, est devenu
aujourd’hui un instrument de division au sein de la societe. La
montee du communautarisme s’appuie pour part sur ces souffrances
historiques separement respectables, mais qui se transforment parfois
en instruments de combat. La societe francaise se retrouve
regulièrement desemparee lorsque surgit cette incomprehension
memorielle en son sein, lorsque la souffrance arabe ou la
revendication noire recusent le poids de la culpabilite collective
face a l’antisemitisme, ou lorsque, a Lyon, le nationalisme turc
blesse s’oppose a la respectabilite acquise par la cause du souvenir
armenien. La reponse ne tient-elle pas dans un “devoir d’histoire” en
plus ou a la place de cette “memoire”, qui peut etre si selective ?
Le respect de la memoire collective y serait assurement gagnant.
–Boundary_(ID_ZfdeVKODV9A1CHUtVRS5yg)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Liberation , France
19 Avril 2006
La memoire armenienne secoue Lyon
Pas encore inaugure, un memorial fait l’objet d’une vive polemique.
par Amaria TLEMSANI
QUOTIDIEN : mercredi 19 avril 2006
“Nous sommes profondement choques, indignes, surpris (…) On ne
s’attendait pas a ce que le memorial soit tague, profane”, commentait
hier matin Michaël Cazarian, representant du Memorial lyonnais du
Genocide Armenien (MLGA). Lundi des inscriptions telles “il n’y a pas
eu de genocide”, “Nike les Armeniens” ou encore “heureux celui qui
est turc” ont ete inscrites sur 5 des 26 stèles de ce monument qui
doit etre inaugure le 24 avril.
L’association pour le MLGA a porte plainte hier, “une enquete est
diligentee et le monument est sous contrôle policier 24 heures sur
24”, a ajoute Michaël Cazarian. Le Comite de defense de la cause
armenienne (CDCA) condamne aussi “de telles pratiques” qui “portent
atteinte a la memoire armenienne”. Ces profanations s’inscrivent dans
un “climat deletère” autour du monument. Deja le 18 mars une
manifestation franco-turque avait rassemble 3 000 personnes contre le
projet du memorial (Liberation 20 mars). Dans les rangs
franco-turques des manifestants, on pouvait lire des pancartes
negationnistes telles que : “Il n’y a jamais eu de genocide
armenien.” En outre, les Lyonnais eux-memes protestent : quatre
recours en refere devant le tribunal administratif de Lyon ont ete
introduits par l’Association de defense des places Bellecour et
Antonin Poncet (ADPBAPL) pour stopper la construction du monument.
Sans resultat.
Pour la conseillère municipale UMP, Marie-Chantal Desbazeille, “le
projet de memorial ne peut s’integrer sur le site historique de la
place Antonin-Poncet”. Le maire de Lyon, Gerard Collomb, se dit
“etonne” voire “scandalise” par ces polemiques autour d’un monument
qui a pour but d'”honorer les victimes de tous les genocides du XXe
siècle”. La communaute armenienne s’inquiète aussi de ces
controverses. Sans confondre les deux mouvements d’opposition, Vartan
Arzoumanian, responsable du CDCA, deplore : “Il aurait fallu qu’il y
ait unanimite sur un tel sujet.” Malgre ce climat très tendu
“l’inauguration aura lieu quoiqu’il arrive le 24 avril”. Ce jour-la,
des manifestations commemoratives du genocide armenien auront lieu
dans toute la France.
–Boundary_(ID_DYRvZy63sMJMvW7oC2sLoA)–

The News-Sentinel
Distributed by Knight/Ridder Tribune News Service
April 17, 2006 Monday
Holocaust survivor wants to stop other genocides
by Erika Nordblom, The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Ind.
Apr. 17–Philip Bialowitz was just 16 when he narrowly escaped death
at the hands of the Nazis. Unlike his father, mother and millions of
other Polish citizens, he survived to tell the story of the Nazis and
their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
An estimated 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor, a prison camp in
Poland.
In 1943, Bialowitz was part of a successful uprising in which six
hundred prisoners fled. Many were killed during the escape, while
others made it to the forest surrounding the camp. Bialowitz was one
of only 48 who survived to see the end of the war that following
year.
He will be in Fort Wayne through April 20 and is scheduled to appear
at 7 tonight at Congregation Achduth Vesholom, 5200 Old Mill Rd. His
speech is part of the annual Yom Hashoah (Holocaust remembrance)
observance of the Fort Wayne Jewish Federation.
The service is free and open to the public. Bialowitz will also speak
at area schools, including Indiana University-Purdue University Fort
Wayne.
By telling his story, Bialowitz hopes to bring attention to the fact
that the Holocaust was not an isolated incident.
“The systematic murder of innocent human beings continues, even in
the 21st century,” he says, “My survival means very little if
Hitler’s legacy of genocide lives on.”
Bialowitz points to the mass killings in the Darfur region of western
Sudan as a recent example of genocide.
“Four-hundred thousand human beings have been murdered only because
of their race,” he says of the conflict in Africa.
When Bialowitz remembers the people who suffered at Sobibor, he
thinks of groups like the people in Darfur, who continue to suffer
today.
“Sobibor stands forever as a warning of what happens when we allow
barbarism to grow out of control,” he says.
Bialowitz says his story is a warning to future generations about the
danger of letting evil prevail.
“We cannot allow our world’s leaders to continue to abandon our
fellow human beings in the same way that they abandoned the
Armenians, the Jews, the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Rwandans, the
Bosnians, and now the Darfurians,” he says, “Sobibor must stand,
today and throughout the ages, as a reminder of the power we all have
within us to save our lives and the lives of our fellow human
beings.”
HEAR HIM: Philip Bialowitz will speak at noon tomorrow in Kettler
Hall (Room G32) on the IPFW campus, 2101 E. Coliseum Blvd. This event
is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the
IPFW Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs at 481-6608.

Armenian genocide victims and survivors to be honored Saturday
By JAMES PAULL, Sun Correspondent
Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
April 20, 2006 Thursday
LOWELL– In 1915, the Ottoman Empire began a forced migration of
Armenians out of Turkey and Armenia in order to squash the growing
Christian minority. For the next several years, as many as 2.5
million Armenians were either murdered or displaced from their homes.
Victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide will be honored
Saturday in downtown Lowell as Armenian Martyrs Day marks the 91st
anniversary of the tragedy.
An honor guard from the Lowell Armenian-American Veterans will lead a
march down Merrimack Street to City Hall, where Dr. Levon Chorbajian,
a sociology professor at UMass Lowell, will speak in honor of the
genocide.
“We are not just mourning the loss of these martyrs but celebrating
the successes of the Armenian people who settled not only here in the
Merrimack Valley, but around the world, said Tom Vartabedian, the
event’s master of ceremonies.
Also expected to participate are U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, state Sen.
Steve Panagiotakos and Mayor Bill Martin.
The event is being sponsored by the Merrimack Valley Armenian
National Committee along with several area churches and service
organizations.
All are invited to join the ceremony at 9:30 a.m., at the corner of
Merrimack and John streets. Following the processional and
flag-raising, there will be a reception at City Hall courtesy of the
Lowell Armenian Relief Society.
In case of rain, the program will be held inside City Hall.

The Boston Herald
April 19, 2006 Wednesday
ALL EDITIONS
Survivors’ tears are testimony to truth
By JOE FITZGERALD
It’s a quote he spits out like vomit, yet, repulsive as it is to John
Baronian, 86, he keeps it on the tip of his tongue for times such as
these.
“Just before he began slaughtering Jews, Hitler asked, `Who
remembers what happened to the Armenians?’ ” the retired Medford
insurance executive recalls. “In other words, people will eventually
forget whatever you do. What a devastating comment. I can assure you,
all around the world, Armenians have never forgotten what happened 90
years ago. And that’s why I tell the story. God forbid anyone
forgets.”
He was referring to the wanton slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by
marauding Turks whose government and descendants continue to wash
their hands of all responsibility, doing whatever they can, including
the hiring of PR firms, to sanitize their role as perpetrators of one
of history’s most heinous chapters.
Baronian, in a piece that ran here in October commemorating the 90th
anniversary of that Armenian genocide, recalled watching his mother
cry every day until the day she died.
“She would try to hide it,” he said, “but we’d catch her. Whenever
she’d try to talk about it she’d break down and cry again, unable to
continue. She could still hear the voices of those little kids, the
sisters and brother I never knew, pleading for something to eat or
drink as they died in her arms out there in the desert.”
Sarah Baronian, who bore John after arriving in America, lived with
her husband in a Turkish farming town called Harput.
“When the genocide began,” John said, “the Turks were immediately
brutal. Women were beaten and raped by Turkish soldiers while men
were hanged in the square or shot in the woods. Then came the death
march, though the Turks called it a relocation march, which was
ridiculous because thousands were forced into the Der El Zor desert
with no water, no food, no anything.”
Such powerful memories are now stirring again throughout the Armenian
community at the thought of a major political candidate becoming
associated, even by extension, with Turkish revisionists who
vigorously deny a genocide took place.
In Arlington, where an orphaned Armenian boy named John Mirak
authored his own version of the American Dream, establishing an
automobile empire that still bears his name, his granddaughter
emotionally recalled her heritage yesterday.
“Both of my grandparents were orphaned by the genocide,” Julia
Mirak Kew, 40, said. “He was 9. But my grandmother, Artemis, was
only an infant. He would talk about it a bit, if you pressed him, but
my grandmother broke down every time I asked her about it. She’d try,
but then start crying again.
A year before Artemis Mirak died at 91, a special thrill came into
her life. Her name was Christina.
“We already had a biological daughter,” Julia explained. “Wanting
her to have a sibling, my husband and I decided to adopt an orphan
from Armenia. My grandmother was so excited; she kept asking, `When
are you leaving?’ And when we got back she wanted to know all about
our trip. But even in all of that happiness we were feeling, she
could not talk about things that happened when she was an orphan over
there.”
So, like John Baronian, Julia tells those stories now, keeping faith
with those not here to tell them anymore.
“Most of them are gone,” she notes, “but they died trusting us to
keep their stories alive.
“Did the genocide actually happen? Tell anyone asking that question
to ask me, because I saw the tears and I felt the pain. Yes, it did.
Absolutely!”
GRAPHIC: DAYS OF SORROW: Julia Mirak Kew, granddaugter of Armenian
genocide survivor, Artemis Mirak, holds her photo. STAFF PHOTO BY
TARA CARVALHO

Fresno Bee (California)
April 18, 2006 Tuesday
FINAL EDITION
Artist’s life was a paradox
by Donald Munro The Fresno Bee
Arshile Gorky wasn’t born with that name. The influential modernist
painter came into this world as Vosdanik Manouk Adoian. That dual
identity always fascinated Nouritza Matossian, a British writer and
actress, whose biography, “Black Angel, The Life of Arshile Gorky”
was published in 2000.
We caught up with Matossian, who is appearing in two events at
California State University, Fresno, that are part of the Arshile
Gorky Festival — which is itself connected to a new exhibition of
the artist’s work at the Fresno Art Museum. She’s giving a lecture
today and a theatrical performance Wednesday.
Question: Gorky came to the United States to escape the Armenian
genocide. Lots of American immigrants changed or shortened their
names. Is there added significance that he took on a whole new name
— and a Russian one, at that?
Answer: His personal story is like a cipher for Armenian history. It
represents a lot of themes that come up for Armenians who survived
the genocide. The whole history of the genocide was completely erased
— by the destruction of churches and houses, but also through the
rewriting of history. What’s meaningful for me is the extent that
Gorky had to hide his past almost from himself. He suffered so much
as a child, losing his mother, losing his home, being involved in the
conflagration around him.
He had a rough life, then?
No artist that I can think of in the 20th century lived the life he
had by the age of 18. It was unbelievable what he went through.
How does a biographer capture the essence of Gorky?
There were two tasks that I had: to understand him and the enigma of
someone who acquires a completely new identity in order to survive;
and to understand how his art comes from the early experiences he
had. I’m really interested in the life of an artist and the way that
work erupts out of that life. I’m interested in people who are exiled
and displaced, and who overcome their displacement by creating a body
of work that represents their country and their lost virtual
homeland.
Yet despite the trauma in his life — the genocide, poverty, cancer,
an auto accident that left him paralyzed, his wife leaving him — his
paintings have an undeniable sense of vitality, of buoyancy.
He was both a very exuberant person and manic-
depressive. Based on what was written about him [before she did her
own research], I was getting the sense of a very dark, somber
personality — but that’s not what the paintings told me. He used to
sing when he painted. I could almost hear music when I saw Gorky’s
paintings for the first time.
You’ve performed your one-woman show worldwide, from London and
off-Broadway to Armenia. Why this format?
I enjoy giving lectures, but I also wanted to do something more
entertaining and dramatic. I play four women in Gorky’s life: his
mother, sister, wife and lover. I base everything on their own
stories. I interviewed his sister in the 1990s before she died, and
she told me stories of her mother and village life. I interviewed his
wife, Agnes Fielding Gorky. I wanted to make the story so it’s as if
Gorky is there, even though he doesn’t appear on stage. It makes the
artist come to life.
The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559)
441-6373.
INFOBOX
If you go
What: Nouritza Matossian lecture and one-woman theatrical performance
When: Lecture 7:30 p.m. today, one-woman show 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Satellite Student Union, Fresno State
Tickets: $10, $6 seniors for lecture; free for one-woman show
Details: (559) 278-2078, (559) 243-5880 or
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Fresno Bee (California)
April 21, 2006 Friday
FINAL EDITION
Armenian genocide to be recalled;
Slate of events planned to mark the 91st anniversary of killings.
Vanessa Colón The Fresno Bee
Valley events to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the Armenian
genocide will begin Saturday with a flag-raising ceremony in Fresno.
Armenian-Americans have been gearing up for Martyrs Day on Monday.
The secular holiday recalls the killing of hundreds of Armenians who
were arrested and taken from their homes in Constantinople before
dawn on April 24, 1915.
The day marks the beginning of the massive killings. Between 1915 and
1923, 1.5 million Armenians were executed at the hands of the Ottoman
Empire. The modern-day republic of Turkey evolved from the empire.
Commemorations also will include church and cemetery services, vigils
and a poetry reading.
The Turkish government denies that genocide occurred. Turkish
officials have repeatedly said that thousands of Turks as well as
Armenians died during World War I.
Armenian-American organizations hope to sway the U.S. government to
recognize the Armenian genocide.
“It’s the truth. We want the truth recognized,” said Hygo
Ohannessian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of Central
California. Many Armenians perished after they were forced to march
from northeast Turkey toward the deserts of Syria.
Ohannessian said she’s frustrated that the U.S. government has not
recognized the genocide while European countries such as France and
Russia have. Turkey is a U.S. ally and its geographic location in the
Middle East plays a role in why the U.S. government won’t call the
killings a genocide, Ohannessian said.
“They [U.S. government] are just playing politics. It’s not in their
interest,” she said.
Varoujan Der Simonian, executive director of the Armenian Technology
Group Inc., said, “The key is for the Turkish government to recognize
it.”
Der Simonian sees a glimmer of hope because he said there’s a trend
among Turkish scholars, especially those outside of Turkey, to call
the killings a genocide. “We are going in the right direction,” he
said.
Earlier this week, a lecture and performance were given in Fresno on
Arshile Gorky, an Armenian-American artist who came to the United
States to escape the Armenian genocide.
Der Simonian said of the genocide: “It’s time to speak out about the
past so we can avoid future atrocities which is [already] happening
now in Africa.”
The reporter can be reached at [email protected] or (559)
441-6313.
INFOBOX
If you go
Highlights of Armenian Martyrs Day and Armenian genocide
commemorations
Saturday
Flag-raising ceremony, Fresno City Hall, 10 a.m.
Sunday
Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church requiem service, 2226 Ventura
Ave., 11:15 a.m.
Service honoring Armenian hero at Masis Ararat cemetery on Hughes and
Belmont avenues, 1 p.m.
Poetry reading, Fresno Art Museum, 2233 N. First St., 3 p.m.
Film and candlelight vigil, California State University, Fresno,
McLane Hall, Room 121, 7:30 p.m.
Monday
Armenian Martyrs Day Commemoration, St. Paul Armenian Church, 3767 N.
First St., 7 p.m.
May 13
Genocide seminar, Armenian Community Center, 2348 Ventura Ave., 9:30
a.m.
Details:
–Boundary_(ID_9OSlO uocug4IVSyUokitlA)–

Lack of proper response to ethnic murders in Russia – Armenian community
ITAR-TASS news agency
22 Apr 06
Moscow, 22 April: Moscow’s Armenian community will not allow the murder
of an Armenian citizen in central Moscow [today] to go unnoticed,
president of the Union of Armenians in Russia Ara Abramyan has said.
“We will most certainly be holding a meeting on Monday [24 April]. We
met every time when there was a racially-motivated murder, and thought
about how these incidents could be prevented,” Abramyan said in a
live broadcast on Ekho Moskvy radio.
He believes these crimes are only possible because the authorities
and society fail to properly respond to manifestations of nationalism
and because these manifestations go unpunished.
“The nationality of a murdered person is not important. This is a
problem for the whole of Russia. If we have extremism and nationalism,
we should call things by their proper names and then these incidents
may not happen again,” he said. [Passage omitted]
[ITAR-TASS at 1805 gmt today said that the Moscow prosecutor’s office
has launched an investigation into the attack under Article 105 of
the Criminal Code (murder). Various leads are being investigated,
the prosecutor’s office said, including a murder motivated by ethnic
hatred]

The Armenians: A journey to safety and hard work
By Sarah Wolfe/ [email protected]
CNC
Friday, April 21, 2006 – Updated: 06:57 PM EST
On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Turk Empire attempted to rid Armenia
of its Christian population. The effort lasted seven years and it is
estimated 1.5 million Armenians died, with another million displaced.
This Sunday, Armenians in the Merrimack Valley will be commemorating
the 91st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide at 3 p.m.
at the high school. The theme for the observance is “Armenia – The
Denied Genocide,” which refers to the Turkish government’s continued
denial that such an event ever took place.
To many outside the culture, little is known about the Armenian
Genocide, or even the country itself. Even more curious is how
Massachusetts came to have one of the largest Armenian populations
in the world.
The following lends some background into the rich history of an
ancient culture.
Where is Armenia?
Armenia is located in Southwestern Asia. The mountainous region
is a little smaller than Maryland and surrounded by Azerbaijan to
the east, Azerbaijan-Naxcivan and Iran to the south, Turkey on the
west and Georgia on the north. Further out is Russia to the north,
and Syria and Iraq to the south.
The nation was the first to adopt Christianity as its official
religion, in 301 A.D. Through the centuries, the land has been occupied
and divided up under different empires including the Roman, Byzantine,
Arab, Persian and Ottoman. Russia took it over in 1828 and in 1920 it
became part of the USSR, until the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991. Since
that time Armenia has been independent.
ia/blcarmenia.htm What is the
Armenian Genocide?
In 1915, the predominantly Muslim Ottoman Turk Empire began a
campaign to rid Armenia of its Christian population that lasted seven
years. It’s estimated that 1.5 million Armenians died from starvation,
violence and death marches. Another million were believed to have been
displaced to other countries. Today, more than half of the world’s
Armenian population lives outside of Armenia.
In 1990, the Massachusetts Legislature officially designated April 24
as a Day of Remembrance of the first genocide of the 20th century. The
Turkish government continues to deny the event.
“It’s been 91 years – the Turkish-Ottoman empire still insists
it hasn’t happened,” said local resident and Armenian-American Al
Movsesian. “Another genocide is happening right now in Darfur [Sudan]
and Armenians have been sending postcards to the president urging
him to step in help. The U.N. isn’t doing much.”
Nationally, Armenians have been making efforts to get a genocide bill
passed in Congress declaring “man’s inhumanity toward mankind.”
How did Armenians end up in Mass. and the Merrimack Valley?
The largest concentration of Armenians worldwide immigrated to the
United States, beginning in the mid-1800s. Towards the turn of the
century, they were led by Protestant missionaries who had discovered
displaced Armenians in Turkey. They helped them find work in homes
as servants, in factories and on farms.
Movsesian’s father came to the U.S. at the turn of the century.
“My father emigrated from Armenia in 1904 and arrived in Worcester,”
he said.
Immigrants were often directed from Ellis Island to Worcester,
he explained, where there were jobs in wire mills at the start of
the Industrial Revolution. Watertown was also a popular destination
because of the Hood Rubber Company.
Movsesian’s father then moved to Haverhill in 1915 to work in the
shoe factories. Growing up in Bradford, Movsesian was surrounded by
a large number of immigrants with a variety of languages and beliefs.
“I was born in the 1920s. When I was in school my classmates were the
children of immigrants. They were Jewish, Irish, Italian, Polish,
Lithuanian,” he said. “As a result we got to learn about all these
different cultures.”
Resident Martha Hananian explained that a couple of people from an
ethnic population, be it Armenian or otherwise, will come to the
U.S. and then try to make enough money to bring family over.
That’s what happened with an uncle of hers, who helped eight relatives
escape from Armenia to the U.S. during the 1920s.
“If they know friends are doing OK they follow them,” she said.
“My uncle opened a shoe factory in Chelsea and then the family
followed him when he went to Haverhill. [Armenians] are a very
tight-knit culture.”
Father Vartan Kassabian of North Andover’s Armenian Apostolistic
Church of Merrimack Valley said many Armenians moved to the area,
including Andover, and became farmers. In Providence, R.I., where
his father settled, the draw was manufacturing and jewelry.
“My father was a genocide survivor who lived in an orphanage in Syria,”
Kassabian said. “He came to the U.S. in 1955, where he worked for
jewelry manufacturers.”
Armenian Genocide survivor 106-year-old Yeghsapeth Giragosian arrived
in Boston with her sister with the help of an orphanage in France after
the two escaped the genocide. Her mother, grandmother and many friends
perished. Yeghsapeth and her sister joined their father in Boston where
he’d been trying to make enough money to bring his family to safety.
“I felt free then,” said Giragosian, recalling her first years in
this country.
She later moved to Methuen to raise a family and then to North Andover
after St. Gregory’s was established in 1970.
Movsesian said the Armenians living around him went to other churches
until another St. Gregory’s – in this case St. Gregory The Illuminator
Armenian Church in Haverhill – opened in 1945. Today, the Merrimack
Valley has 3,000 Armenians representing Haverhill’s St. Gregory The
Illuminator Armenian Church and Holy Cross Armenian Church of Lawrence,
which are merging into Armenian Church at Highe Pointe, to be located
at Ward Hill; St. Artananz Armenian Church in Chelmsford, Ararat
Armenian Congregational Church in Salem, N.H. and St. Gregory the
Armenian Apostolistic Church of Merrimack Valley here in North Andover.

Indymedia UK, UK
April 23 2006
Recognise the Armenian Genocide
Peter Marshall | 23.04.2006 15:16 | Repression | World
On Saturday 22 April, around a thousand Armenians living in the UK
marched from Marble Arch to the Cenotaph in Westminster where a
wreath was laid to draw attention to their demands for the
recognition of the Turkish genocide of 1915-23 in which around 1.5
million Armenians were killed.
Genocide has been around throughout history, but it was only in the
twentieth century that the term was invented. It was needed to
describe both the fate of the Jews under the Nazis and the earlier
Turkish crimes against the Armenians.
Ethnic groups such as the Armenians just didn’t fit in with the
concept of a new Muslim Turkey held by the Young Turks in the early
years of the twentieth century. The only solution was to kill them.
The Turks started on the job on 24 April 1915 by arresting 1000
intellectuals and other leaders and executing them.
Next they conscripted 300,000 male Armenians for army service, but
but instead of sending them to the trenches, they were alleged to be
traitors, disarmed and killed.
Finally, the remaining Armenians – women, children and the elderly –
were dealt with my mass killings and enforced marches into the desert
where they starved. Rape and other atrocities were common.
The Armenians had been living inside what became modern Turkey for
some 3000 years. At the start of 1915 there were over 1.5 million of
them. Most were killed during that year, and by 1923 there were only
around 50,000 left.
The Turkish government still refuses to accept this genocide
occurred. In 1916, a UK parliamentary report by Lord Bryce and Arnold
Toynbee, ‘Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16’
detailed these systematic politically motivated killings, and many
other reports, including some from the UN have given simiilar
accounts.
Over recent years, many governments and other organisations around
the world have passed resolutions affirming that the Armenian
genocide occurred. Like the Nazi holocaust, it is a fact of 20th
century history, and like that, totally reprehensible.
Various Early Day motions in the British parliament have called upon
our government to take some action. The most recent, sponsored by
Stephen Pound MP, “calls upon the UK and Turkish governments publicly
and officially to recognise the Assyrian and Armenian genocide of
1915” and for the “UK Government to call on the European Union to
make official Turkish recognition … one of the pre-conditions for
Turkey’s membership of the EU.” So far this has only attracted 38
signatures – only one from a Conservative.
The march was one of a number of events this year organised by the
Campaign for the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, CRAG, together
with other Armenian community groups. Among those leading the march
was Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, Primate of the Armenian Church of
Great Britain.
More pictures on my web site shortly. Also there are pictures and a
report from the April 2005 march in London.
8738.html