NCC Commemorates 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide
On April 24, 2005, it will be 90 years since the start of the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey died and almost the entire Armenian population was deported from its ancestral lands in Asia Minor.
Many of the methods employed in that genocide - the first of the 20th century - would become models for subsequent genocides, such as under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet Union, Cambodia and Rwanda.
Despite copious documentation and the inter-disciplinary consensus of serious scholars, the Armenian Genocide is still not acknowledged by the present-day Republic of Turkey - nor, officially, by the U.S. government. And despite the lessons of the past, the horrors of genocide continue to the present day, most recently in Darfur, Sudan.
In response, the NCC Governing Board, meeting Feb. 14-15, 2005, in New York City, resolved to ask the Republic of Turkey and the U.S. government to grant official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and to ask that the world community heed the lessons of the Armenian Genocide.
Specifically, the Board asks recognition and unambiguous acknowledgement of “the early ‘seeds’ of genocide when they arise, to act speedily and decisively in these early stages, so as to pre-empt full-blown genocide” and “to resist and rebuke the deniers of genocide.”
Finally, the NCC joined other faithful, including members of the Armenian Church, in remembrance of the souls of those who perished in the Armenian and other genocides in the past 90 years, in prayers for the peace of those who survived, and in petition that “in the century just beginning, God will free humankind of the scourge of genocide once and for all.”
Source
On April 24, 2005, it will be 90 years since the start of the Armenian Genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey died and almost the entire Armenian population was deported from its ancestral lands in Asia Minor.
Many of the methods employed in that genocide - the first of the 20th century - would become models for subsequent genocides, such as under the Nazi regime and in the Soviet Union, Cambodia and Rwanda.
Despite copious documentation and the inter-disciplinary consensus of serious scholars, the Armenian Genocide is still not acknowledged by the present-day Republic of Turkey - nor, officially, by the U.S. government. And despite the lessons of the past, the horrors of genocide continue to the present day, most recently in Darfur, Sudan.
In response, the NCC Governing Board, meeting Feb. 14-15, 2005, in New York City, resolved to ask the Republic of Turkey and the U.S. government to grant official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and to ask that the world community heed the lessons of the Armenian Genocide.
Specifically, the Board asks recognition and unambiguous acknowledgement of “the early ‘seeds’ of genocide when they arise, to act speedily and decisively in these early stages, so as to pre-empt full-blown genocide” and “to resist and rebuke the deniers of genocide.”
Finally, the NCC joined other faithful, including members of the Armenian Church, in remembrance of the souls of those who perished in the Armenian and other genocides in the past 90 years, in prayers for the peace of those who survived, and in petition that “in the century just beginning, God will free humankind of the scourge of genocide once and for all.”
Source