COALITION OF STUDENTS RALLIES FOR RECOGNITION OF GENOCIDE
By Jed Levine
Daily Bruin Contributor
jlevine@media.ucla.edu
The UCLA Daily Bruin, CA
April 24, 2006
Members, allies of Armenian community take steps to gain formal
acknowledgment of event.
UCLA students, along with Armenian students from across Southern
California, came together with the Armenian community Saturday
night for “Blinded by Injustice: Rally Against Denial” to remember
those who were killed in the 1915 Armenian Genocide and campaign for
international recognition.
Today marks the day of remembrance for the genocide that began 91
years ago and lasted for eight years, killing an estimated 1.5 million
Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turkey.
While bodies like the California Congress, the European Union and
other nations have officially acknowledged the genocide, both the
United States and Turkish governments have not.
For Haig Hovesepian, a pharmacology graduate student who was the
UCLA representative coordinator of the event, the rally called to
support involvement in the democratic process, something he believes
is crucial to gaining formal recognition of the genocide.
“It’s not just enough to be aware and feel something about the issue,
but also to do something about the issue,” said Hovesepian.
“(We) have to continually knock on the doors of their representatives
and tell them this is important to you,” he added.
Saturday’s rally in Glendale, the hub of the Armenian community in
the U.S., was coordinated by the All Armenian Student Association
Confederation, a coalition of Armenian Student Associations from 12
universities in the Southern California area.
More than 200 members and allies of the Armenian community were in
attendance, including Congressman Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, a longtime
supporter of the Armenian effort for genocide recognition.
Schiff spoke to the crowd about his current efforts to pass
HConRes195, which would be an official recognition of the genocide
by the U.S. Congress and would urge Turkey to seek resolution with
the Armenian people.
He questioned why Congress voted to acknowledge a genocide in Darfur
and not the Armenian genocide.
“(The U.S. is) a greater country than that, and I think it’s
tremendously important that we lead by example and that we call
genocide for what it is,” said Schiff after his speech.
A series of events last week, including Saturday’s rally and
a benefit concert held last night, have led up to a march to the
Turkish Consulate this afternoon.
Nareeneh Sohbatian, a fourth-year international development studies
and political science student, is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha,
the Armenian sorority at UCLA, which collected over a dozen sandwich
boards from other campus groups and covered them with black paper
and information about the genocide, placing them along Bruin Walk.
“It’s about continuing to educate the Armenian community and educating
the community at large,” Sohbatian said of the various events being
held around the day of remembrance.
The issue of recognition of the Armenian Genocide came to a head at
UCLA in 1997, when the Turkish government offered $1 million to endow
a Turkish studies chair.
The offer came with multiple preconditions including that the chair
would need to “maintain close and cordial relations with academic
circles in Turkey,” provisions which raised red flags among the
Armenian students of UCLA.
The current stance of the Turkish government and Turkish academics
is that a genocide did not occur and that the deaths were the result
of quelling civil unrest and fallout from World War I.
Arbi Ohanian was a fourth-year at UCLA at the time, and took part
in the campaign against the donation that resulted in a vote by the
UCLA Department of History in which the money was turned down due to
possible conflicts in academic integrity.
“It’s still a contemporary issue. It’s not just something that happened
91 years ago, as evidenced by the Turkish Study Chair (incident),”
said Ohanian while attending the rally. “It’s continued denial that’s
occurring.”
In years past, students have organized vigils on their campuses to
remember the genocide, however, this year the main event was moved
to Glendale.
Coordinators also changed the event from a vigil to a rally, as it
has evolved in placing more emphasis on politics and the democratic
process than in previous years.
“In recent years the vigil looked less like a vigil and more like a
rally. This is more like a call to action,” said Christopher Minassian,
chairman of the Genocide Recognition Committee, of the evolution of
the event.
Hovesepian said the importance of events like the “Rally Against
Denial” is that they help to keep the issues of the genocide in
people’s minds and in the public eye.
“There are individuals out there who would like to see these types
of issues dropped because they’re inconvenient,” Hovesepian said.
“So when you have individuals such as ourselves become complacent,
it gives these individuals the opportunity to erase these things like
genocide from our collective conscience. It’s not just our community
but a lesson for other communities,” he added.
Many of the people in attendance Saturday night also felt that
continued awareness was important for the Armenian community.
“I don’t think there’s a difference between April 24 and any other
day,” said Maral Karagozian, a recent UCLA graduate and former member
of the ASA.
“It should always be in our minds that (the Armenian Genocide) is a
part of us.”