GENOCIDE: TURKEY’S DARK ‘SECRET’ RESONATING THE AIRWAVES
Rosie Malek-Yonan
Assyrian International News Agency
March 12 2008
Los Angeles (AINA) — With the world’s attention focused on the
battlegrounds of Belgium and France, under the protective mask of
WWI, the systematic extermination of Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was carried out by Sultan Abdul-Hamid II,
and the Young Turks, Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha,
the hallmark of the first Genocide of the 20th century.
Today in Turkey, openly discussing or writing about genocide and
holocaust carries a heavy punishment including imprisonment. The fear
instilled in Turkish society is implemented in an effort to conceal
a nearly century-old dark chapter in its Ottoman past.
While freedom of speech and uncensored dialog about these genocides
are heavily suppressed, the dialog is now slowly unfolding elsewhere
in the democratic free world and the west. Just last week one such
dialog was broadcast via the airwaves of Australia’s National Radio.
I was invited by a producer of Turkish descent to speak about the
Assyrians and the Assyrian Genocide on the program Triple J, the
National Youth Network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As an Assyrian, I found it very encouraging to have received an
invitation from a Turkish producer to speak about a subject that is
virtually taboo and unlawful in her own country.
But as I suspected, in no time the inevitable occurred.
In what is becoming a predictable and common behavior (AINA
10-30-2007, 11-20-2007), Turkish hackers once again attacked my
book’s website. This latest incident trailed on the heels of last
week’s radio broadcast. This is the fifth such attack on the website
of The Crimson Field, a book I wrote about the Assyrian Genocide.
If the string of assults in the past several months by Turkish hackers
against Assyrian websites, including that of the Assyrian Academic
Society, is meant to intimidate Assyrians from speaking about the
Genocide, obviously, these tactics on the part of the hackers are
futile.
Today’s Assyrians still carry with them memories and the wounds
of those losses. And yet they are expected to remain quiet. When
that expectation is not met, they encounter aggressive demands and
intimidation to keep silent. The Assyrian nation will never remain
silent.
Terrorization and bullying will not keep a nation silent when two
out of every three Assyrians were murdered in the genocide and mass
ethnic cleansing orchestrated by the Ottoman government in the early
part of the 20th century.
What I find inexcusable is when decent members of society,
irrespective of ethnicity, remain complacent with a do-nothing
attitude, contributing to the cycle of fanaticism and odium in regards
to the question of the Assyrian Genocides of not only last century,
but also the ongoing violence towards that nation particularly in
Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 war.
Rosie Malek-Yonan is an Assyrian actor, director and author of The
Crimson Field. She is an outspoken advocate of issues concerning
Assyrians, in particular bringing attention to the Assyrian Genocide
and the plight of today’s Assyrians in Iraq since the U.S. lead
invasion of Iraq in 2003. On June 30, 2006, she was invited to testify
on Capitol Hill regarding the genocide and persecution of Assyrians in
Iraq by Kurds and Islamists. She is on the Board of Advisors at Seyfo
Center in Holland that exclusively deals with the Assyrian Genocide
issue. She has acted opposite many of Hollywood’s leading actors and
has received rave reviews both as an actor and director. Most recently,
she played the role of Nuru Il-Ebrahim, opposite Reese Whitherspoon
in New Line Cinema’s "Rendition", directed by Oscar winning director
Gavin Hood, which will be released in 2007.