U.N. GENOCIDE EXHIBIT POSTPONED OVER TURKISH OBJECTION TO REFERENCE TO ARMENIAN KILLINGS
By Edith M. Lederer
Associated Press
1:58 p.m. April 9, 2007
UNITED NATIONS – A U.N. exhibition on the 1994 Rwanda genocide,
scheduled to open Monday, has been postponed because of Turkish
objections to a reference to the murders of a million Armenians in
Turkey during World War I.
James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust which
works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition,
said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents
and it was put up on Thursday.
After a Turkish diplomat complained about the reference to the Armenian
murders, he said, Armenia’s U.N. Ambassador Armen Martirosyan went
to see the new Undersecretary for Public Information Kiyotaka Akasaka
and they agreed to remove the words "in Turkey."
Martirosyan said Akasaka even invited him to the exhibition’s opening,
but he was informed late Sunday "the opening would be postponed,
or delayed, or even canceled." He blamed Turkish "censorship" and
the country’s refusal "to come to terms with their own history."
On Monday, the exhibition was still in the visitor’s lobby, but turned
away from public view.
U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed the Turkish complaint
but said "the basic concern" was that the review process for
U.N. exhibitions, which takes into account "all positions," was
not followed.
"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process
is completed," Haq said.
Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.
Smith told the Associated Press the exhibition refers to the Armenian
murders in the context of explaining the word "genocide," which was
coined by Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. Lemkin
was inspired by what happened to the Armenians and other mass killings,
and campaigned in the League of Nations – the precursor of the United
Nations – against what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism."
Smith said a small panel on Lemkin in the exhibit "says that during
World War I a million Armenians were murdered in Turkey."
It goes on to explain that Lemkin first used the word genocide in 1943,
and then focuses on the Rwanda genocide, he said.
Haq said "the U.N. hasn’t expressed any position on incidents that
took place long before the United Nations was established" after
World War II.
"In any case, the focus during the anniversary of the Rwanda genocide
should remain on Rwanda itself," he said.
Rwanda’s genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal
Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital,
Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The 100-day slaughter, in which more than
500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists, ended after
rebels ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the
killings.
Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done
without referring to the Armenians.
But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a
matter of principle you can’t just go around striking things out. It
is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide
issues, we couldn’t do that on any genocide, and we can’t do this,"
he said.
"If we can’t get this right, it undermines all the values of the
U.N. It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms
of preventing (genocide)," Smith said.
"You can’t learn the lessons from history if you’re going to sweep all
of that history under the carpet. And what about accountability? What
about ending impunity if you’re going to hide part of the truth? It
makes a mockery of all of this."
Associated Press Writer Lily Hindy contributed to this report.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress