Armenians Appeal for Recognition of Genocide
By Ben Hurley
Epoch Times, NY
April 3 2005
The Epoch Times
May 03, 2005
On April 24, 1915, as Anzacs troops were on their way to Gallipoli,
the Turkish Ottoman government began to eradicate its Armenian
Christian population, in a campaign which would see an estimated 1.5
million killed.
In recognition of this tragedy approximately 650 Armenians on Thursday
April 28 paraded through Sydney’s Central Business District to Martin
Place, where they held a moment’s silence to commemorate its 90th
Anniversary.
“Basically it’s an unrecognized genocide”, said Haig Kaysserian,
a spokesman for the Armenian Youth Federation. “If your father or
your grandfather, god forbid, was to pass away, or your mother or
your grandmother, you’d want their souls to rest in peace…you’d
want to find what happened. Whereas we don’t have that luxury.”
The Turkish Government insists that the Armenian death count is
inflated, and that Armenians were killed amid civil war during the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
“The position is total denial,” says Panayiotis Diamadis, Director
of the Australian Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Mr.
Diamadis says he has ample evidence of a massive genocide campaign,
including copies of telegrams sent from the capital to provincial
governments at the time, reports from diplomats of then Turkish allies,
and testimonies by Anzac prisoners of war.
He says that the difference between civil war and genocide is an
important distinction to make. “The difference is the intent on
the part of the state to wipe out the targeted group, and that’s the
difference with the Armenians, the clear policy, the clear orders from
the Turkish government were ‘wipe out every single Armenian wherever
you find them’.”
“Particularly in the political sphere they [The Turkish Government]
are extremely active in blocking or attempting to block any form of
state recognition by any other countries around the world, especially
by the United States Congress,” he said.
The NSW Parliament passed a resolution in 1997 recognizing the genocide
of the Armenian people and calling on the Turkish Government to do
the same. More significantly, German parliament is currently debating
a resolution which, if passed, will ask for the Armenian people’s
forgiveness for pre-Nazi Germany’s complicity in the massacres.
As Turkey readies for European Union accession talks later this year,
European politicians are placing increasing pressure on Turkey to
recognize that the killing of the Armenians during WWI was genocide.
On Tuesday April 19, Poland became one of 15 countries to officially
acknowledge the Ottoman campaign as genocide.