PRESS RELEASE
ARMENIAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE – SCANDINAVIA /ANCS
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12637 Hägersten
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Contact:Suzanne K. Holmquist
Agop Khatcherian
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Fax: +46 8 6456592
e-mail: anc_skand@yahoo.se

`MRS FREIVALDS: WHAT WILL YOU DO TO HELP OPEN THE OTTOMAN ARCHIVES?’

Stockholm. 14/04/05-

`The Turkish government has promised to open the ottoman
archives. These archives are very important for those who are working
with the genocide of Christian minorities, Armenians, Assyrians,
Caldeans in perpetrated by the Ottomans in 1915. However the Turkish
promises appear to be empty words. Until today Turkeys has not kept
its promises. What does the Swedish foreign minister Leila Freivalds
plan to do in order to make the Turkish government respect its own
words.’ These are the questions that Mrs. Annelle Enochson ,

a Christian Democratic Party member elected to the Swedish Riksdag has
addressed to the foreign minister Leila Freivalds.

The Turkish government has promised now a while to make the Ottoman
archives available to historians and researchers. `That was good news,
`says Prof. David Gaunt, `Our university, the SÖDERTÖRNS HÖGSKOLA was
one institution that had shown interest in the archives. `

`After several unfruitful attempts to get out documents from the
Ottoman archives, I turned to the Swedish Committee for Human Rights,
for help’ says Prof David gaunt. This is a support committee working
in the frame of the Swedish Parliament, and they in their turn
presented a list of the documents Gaunt was interested in to the
Turkish foreign minister in November 2004. Until March 2005, the
Turkish government has given no signs, not the slightest signal, about
the requested documents. – I have no other choice but see upon the
promise of opening the archives by the Turkish authorities as nothing
but empty words, says Annelle Enochson. So I have decided to take up
the issue with our foreign minister and submitted a wr