PETITION CALLING NOT TO IMPEDE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION INTRODUCED IN SWEDISH PARLIAMENT

PanARMENIAN.Net
10.06.2008 15:16 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On an initiative of Vahagn Avedian, Chairman of the
Board of Union of Armenian Associations in Sweden, a petition issued in
10 languages, was submitted to the members of the Swedish Parliament
in order to influence on a decision of the Foreign Affairs Commission
to disallow the proposals for recognition of the Armenian Genocide,
independent French journalist Jean Eckian told PanARMENIAN.Net.

The text signed by 60 leading experts in Holocaust and Genocide
studies reads in part, "Today, Sweden is internationally regarded as
a champion of human rights. The incumbent Swedish authorities should
live up to this reputation and reject any compromise with negationism
and denial. The Swedish government should attempt to assist Turkey to
become a better democracy by facing its history and acknowledging the
truth, not by continuing to stagger in the darkness of self-deception
and pretense. Today, the data and information about the Genocide of
Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks are so extensive that no
serious politician can honestly cite insufficient or inconclusive
research as an excuse to avoid recognition. Refusal to recognize an
established fact based on qualitative and quantitative research may
be regarded as being tantamount to denial. The signatories have no
doubt that the massacres of Christians and other minorities in the
Ottoman Empire during the World War I constituted genocide."

The Swedish Parliament meets tomorrow, June 11, to rule on this issue.