Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 3 2007
Armenian lobby hits back with Time’s help
Time magazine on Friday released a 52-minute documentary by French
director Laurence Jourdan on the Armenian `genocide.’
With a full-page advertisement by `a coalition of Armenian Groups,’
the DVD also includes a 46-minute interview with Dr. Yves Ternon on
the Armenian `genocide.’ The DVD and the advertisement have been paid
for by Time, according to European Armenian Federation.
Delighted with Time’s reaction, the Armenian lobby announced that
Michael Elliot, the director of Time International, had said Time had
decided to call the 1915 events a genocide and called on all editors
and correspondents to describe 1915 only as a genocide.
Time’s decision to distribute the DVD came after a CD made by the
Ankara Chamber of Commerce last year was distributed by Time.
According to the European Armenian Federation, Time decided to
correct this mistake and agreed to financially back and distribute
the documentary.
The distribution of 550,000 copies with the European edition of Time
comes in the wake of the assassination of Hrant Dink. In addition,
while a French bill criminalizing the denial of an Armenian genocide
is awaiting Senate approval, EU term president Germany has proposed a
pan-European law to imprison deniers of genocide, war crimes and
crimes against humanity.
There are serious allegations in the one-page advertisement, which
are considered to be baseless by Ankara. Some of them are:
`Who after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’
Hitler posed this question on Aug. 22, 1939 before embarking on the
Holocaust.
The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the
Montreal Gazette and Time magazine call 1915 a genocide.
The UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection
of Minorities and over a dozen European countries affirmed that the
1915 events were a genocide.
03.02.2007
Selçuk Gültaþlý Brussels