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    Emil Lazarian
  • 6 years ago
    • Categories: 2019

DENIAL IS THE LAST ACT OF A GENOCIDE: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TURNS 104

The Blunt Post
 
 
DENIAL IS THE LAST ACT OF A GENOCIDE: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TURNS 104
 
 
By Vic Gerami
 
 
 
On Armenians worldwide commemorate the 104th anniversary of the Genocide that claimed the lives of 1.5 million people.On this day in 1915 hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed.
 
The massacres were perpetrated in different regions of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turks Government which was in power at the time.
 
When WWI erupted, the Young Turks government, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of Pan Turkism – the establishment of a mega Turkish empire comprising of all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia extending to China, intending also to Turkify all ethnic minorities of the empire.
 
 
The Armenian population became the main obstacle to the realization of this policy. Although the decision on the deportation of all Armenians from Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) was adopted in late 1911, the Young Turks used WWI as a suitable opportunity for its implementation.
 
The first international reaction to the violence resulted in a joint statement by France, Russia and Great Britain, in May 1915, where the Turkish atrocities directed against the Armenian people was defined as “new crime against humanity and civilization” agreeing that the Turkish government must be punished for committing such crimes.
 
While Turkey still continues to deny the Armenian Genocide, it has been acknowledged by thirty countries, countless international organizations and forty-nine US States. It is illegal to deny the Armenian Genocide in Switzerland and France.
 
 Vic Gerami
 
Vic Gerami is journalist, media contributor and the Editor & Publisher of The Blunt Post. He spent six years at Frontiers Magazine, followed by LA Weekly and Voice Media Group. His syndicated celebrity Q&A column, 10 Questions with Vic, is a LA Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award finalist. In 2009, he was featured in the Wall Street Journal as a “Leading Gay Activist” for opposing Prop 8 and his marriage equality advocacy. Vic was on the planning committee of the historic Resist March in 2017 and is a founding board member of Equality Armenia. In 2015, he was noted in the landmark Supreme Court lawsuit, Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Court held in a 5–4 decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Vic is a contributor for Montrose Star, DC Life Magazine, Out & About Nashville, Q Virginia, GNI MAG, QNotes, Windy City Times, WeHo Times, GoWeHo, Los Angeles Blade, Asbarez, California Courier, Desert Daily Guide, Armenian Weekly, GED, The Pride LA, IN Magazine and The Advocate Magazine.
 
 
 
 
 
Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS