Students remember deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 with campus rally
By Neal Larkins
The UCLA Daily Bruin, CA
April 22 2005
March recalls genocide
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
nlarkins@media.ucla.edu
For a week now, students walking along Bruin Walk may have seen
grotesque images of the Armenian Genocide – emaciated children,
dismembered bodies and dead Armenians swinging from the noose.
These images were displayed in commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.
Thursday, Armenian and non-Armenian students at UCLA mourned and
condemned the genocide with a silent march throughout campus and a
rally at Bruin Plaza.
A bill recognizing the genocide was passed in the state Senate on
Thursday.
Armenian Student Association President Raffi Kassabian said the
graphic images are needed to inform students of the genocide.
“Many political science and 20th century history classes don’t talk
about the genocide,” he said. Approximately 50 students quietly
carried signs in memory of those killed in the genocide.
“Genocide unpunished is genocide encouraged,” read one commemorator’s
sign. Another called Mount Ararat “Turkey’s prize from the genocide.”
Armenians identify Mount Ararat with their 3,000-year-old historic
homeland.
On a very hot and bright day, for an hour-long outdoor march, all
participants wore black to remember what happened 90 years ago, as
their ancestors began a 19-day, 215-mile forced march through the
arid deserts of Syria.
This act began nine years of violence that Armenians say killed 1.5
million of their people.
The marchers were solemn, yet willing to answer the questions of
passersby, especially if in regard to the continuing Turkish denial
of genocide and the United States’ and other countries’ refusal to
classify the events as genocide.
“The unrelenting denial by the Turkish government deprives it of
moral standing in the international community,” said Armenian history
Professor Richard Hovannisian in an e-mail. He is currently in Armenia
for a genocide conference.
Some students feel that the Turkish denial both insults their past
and makes the world more hospitable to other perpetrators of genocide.
“By saying it didn’t happen, you deny our history,” said Johnny
Apikian, a fourth-year business economics student. “It may be cliche
to say history repeats itself, but it does.”
Armenian Americans have tried unsuccessfully to get the United States
to recognize the events as genocide.
Naz Koulloukian, a fourth-year communication studies student, said
he has been attending the annual protest at the Los Angeles Turkish
consulate since he was eight years old, and would be there again
this Saturday. He said his family’s history was forever altered
after his grandmother’s parents were killed by the Ottoman Turks,
and his grandmother was then raised in a Syrian orphanage.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress