CNN’S ‘ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’ DOCUMENTARY FRUSTRATES AMERICAN ARMENIANS

Today’s Zaman
Dec 6 2008
Turkey

A documentary aired on Thursday on the CNN International news station
to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has failed
to satisfy an influential Armenian organization based in the United
States.

The documentary, titled "Scream Bloody Murder" and anchored by
Christiane Amanpour, gave wide coverage to the Holocaust as well
as atrocities committed in Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda and
chemical attacks on the Iraqi Kurds during the Saddam Hussein era,
the Anatolia news agency reported.

The documentary briefly touched upon the 1915 incidents in which
Anatolian Armenians were killed during the days of the Ottoman Empire,
suggesting that Christian Armenian citizens were massacred and forced
to emigrate for eight years and, as a result, 1 million Armenian women,
men and children were dead, the Anatolia reported.

The Washington-based Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA),
on its Web site, urged Armenian-Americans "to take action" against
the documentary, by sending protest letters to CNN executives.

"You have done a disservice to your viewers by nearly entirely
neglecting the Armenian Genocide — the thoroughly documented
systematic destruction by Ottoman Turkey between 1915 and 1923 of over
one and half million of its Armenian citizens. The only reference to
the first genocide of the 20th century is indirect and lasts only 45
seconds," ANCA said in a text, which it advised Armenian-Americans
to include in their protest letters.