ARMENIAN CITIZENS CALL FOR GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
Lisa Kirazian
The UCSD Guardian Online
n-citizens-call-for-genocide-recognition-1.1730853
April 23 2009
CA
Dear Editor,
Walking across the UCSD campus each day are dozens of Armenian students
— students whose ethnic history pulses with an unforgettable incident
of cultural persecution that remains painfully relevant to them and
to today’s anxious world: the Armenian genocide of 1915, the Ottoman
Empire’s destruction of more than 1 million Armenians, commemorated
worldwide every April 24.
But how can an event that happened 94 years ago still be relevant
with the other crises currently raging across the globe?
Quite easily.
The Ottoman government’s desire to "cleanse" minorities and create a
Pan-Turkish state has been well documented. Records reveal that the
Ottoman Empire was particularly intent on annihilating the Armenian
race, which had become so successful within its country — a country
with much territory previously belonging to ancient Armenia. The
annihilation of the Armenian race would be the first genocide of the
20th century, one that Adolf Hitler studied in preparation for his
own Holocaust years later.
Government archives in Turkey and around the world have proof of these
goals. Yet Turkey still denies an Armenian genocide ever occurred,
and many countries still side with Turkey when it claims that the
deaths of a million Armenians were merely the result of a variety of
World War I skirmishes and Armenian insurgencies impossible to pin
on the government.
Sound familiar?
Acknowledging the Armenian genocide is still a key world priority as
long as there is a Darfur, Rwanda, Kosovo or Cambodia, or any country
imprisoning people for their beliefs — particularly students and
scholars — or a terrorist group plotting to annihilate another race,
nation or ideology.
Most Armenian students on campus and within the wider local Armenian
community hope that with a new president and vice president, both
with longstanding records of support for Armenian issues, perhaps
the tide will turn, the age-old avoidance of the truth will stop,
and official legislation acknowledging the Armenian genocide will be
signed into law.
However, between war and the economy, these are rather worrisome,
distracting times and once again the State Department will likely use
the current multiplatform war as its good old excuse to pressure the
administration to bypass the Armenian genocide issue altogether —
as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently attempted to
do in his first official dialogue with President Barack Obama.
After all, the only remaining superpower in the world is so darn
powerless in the Middle East unless it retains a strategic military
base in Turkey, right? Surely the United States is rendered useless
without one. Our powerful nation and military — with two world-war
victories and many others under its belt — couldn’t possibly innovate
an alternative borne out of a bigger-picture integrity, could they?
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
