EAFJD CALLS ON DEUTSCHE BANK TO RETURN ASSETS TO ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS’ HEIRS
PanARMENIAN.Net
22.11.2006 18:07 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Armenian Federation calls the
descendants of Armenian Genocide survivors, defenders of human rights,
European leaders, and all Euro citizens to protest Deutsche Bank’s
refusal to accept responsibility for the crimes it committed in 1915
and continues to profit from today. In a manner consistent with the
U.S.-based New York Life Insurance Company and the French AXA Life
Insurance Company, Deutsche Bank illegally appropriated funds and
property from genocide victims and, as such, played a unconscionable
role in Ottoman Turkey’s destruction of the Armenian population
between 1915 and 1923. Recent estimates by experts in the field
show that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were, at the time of the
Genocide, owned more than 20 million dollars that were held in trust
by the German company. Deutsche Bank never returned these amounts
to the heirs of genocide victims. As EAFJD told PanARMENIAN.Net,
compounding Deutsche Bank’s intransigence was its use of Armenian
deportees as slave workers on the construction of its Berlin-Baghdad
road works. Following their slave labor, these Armenians were
exterminated during deportations into deserts of Syria.
The Federation notes that the current president of Deutsche Bank
congratulates his company for fulfilling "its social responsibilities,"
a statement that stands in sharp contrast to both its genocidal
complicity in 1915 and its refusal to accept responsibility for its
crimes today. The European Armenian Federation, noting that New York
Life and AXA have been condemned for their crimes, welcomes the fact
that similar proceedings are under way against Deutsche Bank.
Consequently, the Federation calls on all EU citizens to call
on Deutsche Bank to live up to its own standards by accepting
responsibility for its wrongdoing and fairly compensating those whose
families it has stolen from.