Belmont Citizen-Herald , MA
April 11 2010

Hovsepian: We still remember April 24, 1915

By Jirair Hovsepian

Belmont, Mass. ‘ This April will be the 95th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide. Almost a century has gone by with eyewitnesses and
survivors dwindling to a handful.

For thousands of years Armenians lived in Anatolia and Cilicia, now
Turkey, without Turks, creating a unique alphabet, architecture, art,
music, and in 301 AD accepted Christianity as the first nation to
adopt it.

In 1639, the Ottoman Empire occupied Western Armenia. Through the
centuries, they harassed, overtaxed, and committed localized
massacres. Between 1894 and 1896, Sultan Abdul-Hamid organized
massacres killing over 200,000 Armenians. In 1909, the Young Turk
party massacred 35,000 Armenians.

Lord Byron wrote: `¦ an oppressed and noble nation ¦ It would be
difficult perhaps to find the annals of a nation less stained with
crimes than the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and
their vices those of compulsion.’

In 1915, Talaat Pasha, the Interior Minister, resolved to solve the
`Armenian Question.’ Along with Djemal Pasha, head of the police, and
Enver Pasha, the Minister of War, masterminded the deliberate
annihilation of the Armenian nation.

Beginning April 24, 1915 until 1923, the Ottoman Empire killed
1,500,000 Armenians, men, women and children, two thirds of the
population. There are countless studies written by historians and
genocide scholars regarding this inhumanity to man.

Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
from 1913 to 1916, reported: "¦Deportation of and excesses against
peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye
witnesses [sic] it appears that a campaign of race extermination
[genocide] is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against
rebellion."

Today’s Turkey as the beneficiary of the loss of the Armenians’ lives,
property, lands, and irreplaceable antiquities from millennia, still
denies that their ancestors committed the most horrific crime in human
history.

They spend millions trying to hide the truth by intimidating their
population with Article 301 (insulting Turkishness), the U.S.
government’s security by threatening to close the US airbase in
Incirlik, hiring former U.S. officials as lobbyists to prevent
Congress from officially recognizing fact of The Genocide.

Sen. Obama while campaigning for the presidency promised: `¦ as
President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide." On January 19,
2008, he said `¦ that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a
personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented
fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.’

Unfortunately, he has succumbed to the Turkish tactics and reneged on
his honorable pledge.

On March 4, House Foreign Affairs Committee passed (HR252) officially
recognizing that the 1.5 million Armenian deaths was a genocide.
Immediately, the Turkish Government recalled its ambassador to the
U.S. as a protest.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1944, coined the
term `genocide’ for the Nuremberg trials, citing as example the
experience of the Armenians in 1915.

Under pressure from Turkey, the Obama administration is being duped
and actively involving itself in ensuring that the resolution is not
brought before the full House, thereby being complicit in denial.

On April 23, 2008, Dr. Gregory Stanton, president of International
Association of Genocide Scholars, said: `¦there is an eighth stage in
every genocide: Denial. It is actually a continuation of the genocide,
¦ Denial harms the victims and their survivors. ¦ Elie Wiesel has
repeatedly called Turkey’s denial a double killing, as it strives to
kill the memory of the event. We believe the U.S. government should
not be party to efforts to kill the memory of a historical fact as
profound and important as the genocide of the Armenians, which Hitler
used as an example in his plan for the Holocaust."

As long as one Armenian lives, the Armenian Genocide will always be
remembered. As long as one honest and honorable man remembers it,
there is hope for preventing future genocides.

Jirair Hovsepian lives on Chandler Street.

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