WNBC Commentary

[Joseph]

Gabe Pressman's View: The Forgotten Genocide

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When Adolf Hitler was trying to persuade his aides that a Jewish holocaust would be tolerated by the west, he said, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
In 1915, the Turks began a systematic slaughter of the Armenian people -- an estimated 1.5 million were killed. The Turkish government still denies it ever happened, despite convincing evidence, including photographs and the testimony of respected scholars.
Systematically, the Turks rounded up Armenian men, women and children. Some were executed outright. Many were tortured first, with implements modeled after the fiendish devices used in the Spanish Inquisition. There were death marches in which tens of thousands of Armenians were forced to walk hundreds of miles into the deserts of Syria. Many perished on the way.

There were massacres delivered, historians say, with great cruelty. One bizarre feature of this period was that, while torturing was taking place at night, people would gather outside, beating drums and blowing whistles, trying to drown out the screams of the tortured.
Henry Morgenthau Sr., the grandfather of Manhattan's district attorney, was American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and did much to inform the world of the genocide taking place.
This is the month in which the world remembers the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jewish people perished. April 24 has been set aside for remembering the Armenian genocide. In many ways, the Armenian genocide was a precursor of what would happen to 6 million European Jews three decades later.
You can't blame the Armenian people, those who've settled in the states and those in Europe, for feeling neglected. The world seems to have virtually forgotten their ordeal. But it is still remembered with great pain by the descendants of those who suffered or died.
An editorial in the New York Times points out that the Armenian killing was the 20th century's first genocide, setting an example that later emboldened Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda and the Sudanese in the present day. The New York Times deplores as a "cover-up" the fact that the United Nations has blocked a scheduled exhibit at United Nations headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
The reason: because this exhibit mentions the mass murder of Armenians and Turkey objected.
We need to remember this shameful episode in world history. If the United Nations and the Turks turn their backs on the Armenians, they demean us all. The Armenians should not be ignored or forgotten. Their ordeal should be honored -- at the United Nations. There should be a ceremony and the hard-nosed Turkish diplomats should lay a wreath.
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[Joseph]

New York Times Editorial

New York Times

April 13, 2007
Editorial

Turkey and the U.N.’s Cover-Up

More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there that killed 1.5 million Armenians. It was the 20th century’s first genocide. The world noticed, but did nothing, setting an example that surely emboldened such later practitioners as Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda in 1994 and today’s Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings, using the word genocide in reference to these events is prosecuted as a serious crime. Which makes it all the more disgraceful that United Nations officials are bowing to Turkey’s demands and blocking this week’s scheduled opening of an exhibit at U.N. headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it mentions the mass murder of the Armenians.

Ankara was offended by a sentence that explained how genocide came to be recognized as a crime under international law: “Following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes.” The exhibit’s organizer, a British-based antigenocide group, was willing to omit the words “in Turkey.” But that was not enough for the U.N.’s craven new leadership, and the exhibit has been indefinitely postponed.

It’s odd that Turkey’s leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today’s democratic Turkey with the now distant crime. As for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his inexperienced new leadership team, they have once again shown how much they have to learn if they are to honorably and effectively serve the United Nations, which is supposed to be the embodiment of international law and a leading voice against genocide.

[Joseph]

New York Times

April 13, 2007
Editorial

Turkey and the U.N.’s Cover-Up

More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there that killed 1.5 million Armenians. It was the 20th century’s first genocide. The world noticed, but did nothing, setting an example that surely emboldened such later practitioners as Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda in 1994 and today’s Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings, using the word genocide in reference to these events is prosecuted as a serious crime. Which makes it all the more disgraceful that United Nations officials are bowing to Turkey’s demands and blocking this week’s scheduled opening of an exhibit at U.N. headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it mentions the mass murder of the Armenians.

Ankara was offended by a sentence that explained how genocide came to be recognized as a crime under international law: “Following World War I, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes.” The exhibit’s organizer, a British-based antigenocide group, was willing to omit the words “in Turkey.” But that was not enough for the U.N.’s craven new leadership, and the exhibit has been indefinitely postponed.

It’s odd that Turkey’s leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today’s democratic Turkey with the now distant crime. As for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his inexperienced new leadership team, they have once again shown how much they have to learn if they are to honorably and effectively serve the United Nations, which is supposed to be the embodiment of international law and a leading voice against genocide.

Wednesday, 18 April 2007
N.Y. Times Deals a Knock Out Punch to Turkish Denialism
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

The Turkish Ambassador to the United Nations must have been very proud of himself when he succeeded in temporarily shutting down a U.N. photo exhibition on the Rwandan Genocide, after discovering a single sentence that read: "one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey."

Little did Ambassador Baki Ilkin and his government know that the attempt to eliminate a simple reference which did not even describe the Armenian mass killings as genocide and may have been overlooked by most exhibit visitors, would blow up in their faces in a very big and unexpected way.

As stated previously in this column, Turkey, unintentionally, is the greatest publicist of the Armenian Genocide by its obsessive objections to its mention by anyone, anywhere.

The Turkish complaint against the mention of Armenian "murders" at the Rwandan exhibition was reported by the Associated Press. The lengthy wire story, which extensively described the facts of the Armenian Genocide, was printed by newspapers around the globe. While trying to get rid of one harmless line that most people would not even have noticed, Turkish officials managed to get several paragraphs about the Armenian Genocide published in hundreds of newspapers around the world! As the AP reported: "Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century."

In one thoughtless knee-jerk reaction, the Turkish government managed to reconfirm its repressive image among millions of newspaper readers, antagonize the Rwandan government, and upset the U.K.-based Aegis Trust, which had helped organize the exhibition. It also drew the ire of usually mild-mannered Armenian government officials. Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian blasted Ankara by stating: "It is not enough that the Government of Turkey thinks it can hide its history from its own people. Now, they have taken their campaign of cover-up and distortion to such lengths that they will prevent an exhibition on Genocide entitled ‘Lessons of Rwanda.'"

The New York Times also covered the Turkish objection and the controversy regarding the cancellation of the U.N. exhibition and, just like the AP, made direct references to the Armenian Genocide.

However, the biggest surprise was yet to come. On April 13, The N.Y. Times published a hard-hitting editorial that blasted Turkey's obsessive efforts to deny the Armenian Genocide. It dealt such a devastating blow that Turkish denialism may never recover from it.

The editorial, under the headline, "Turkey and the U.N.'s Cover-Up," stated in part: "More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there that killed 1.5 million Armenians. It was the 20th century's first genocide.... Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings, using the word genocide in reference to these events is prosecuted as a serious crime. It's odd that Turkey's leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today's democratic Turkey with the now distant crime."

The same editorial appeared in the International Herald Tribune, under an even harsher headline: "Abetting Turkish Denial at the United Nations."

While U.N. officials are mulling over a face-saving way of resuming the photo exhibition, Rwandans, Armenians and all those who cherish the truth should look into the questionable role played by U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq, in this whole episode. He was quoted by AP last week as saying that the photo exhibit was taken down because it was not properly reviewed.

Mr. Haq has also been repeatedly quoted by Turkish denialists as having allegedly stated back in 2000 that "the United Nations has not approved or endorsed a report labeling the Armenian experience as Genocide." Last week, he was quoted by AP as saying: "The U.N. hasn't expressed any position on incidents that took place long before the United Nations was established."

Both of those statements are absolutely untrue, as the U.N. has taken a position on the Jewish Holocaust which, just like the Armenian Genocide, occurred before the establishment of the U.N. in 1945.

Furthermore, there were several extensive discussions of the Armenian Genocide at the U.N. for more than a dozen years, which culminated in a report adopted in 1985 by the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

Earlier in the week, this writer spoke to Mr. Haq and asked him if he was aware that U.N human rights panels had dealt with the issue of the Armenian Genocide. He said he knew that various U.N. human rights bodies had discussed this issue and adopted reports which referred to the Armenian Genocide. Regarding the statement that Turkish denialists constantly attribute to him, he said he had simply stated that there has never been a U.N. General Assembly resolution on the Armenian Genocide.

Armenia's Ambassador at the United Nations may now want to contact the U.N. Secretary General's office and ask him to issue a formal statement declaring that the U.N. human rights bodies had indeed dealt with the Armenian Genocide and adopted a report in 1985 properly calling it a genocide.

There is no question that the Rwandan exhibition will be reopened at the U.N. along with the reference to the Armenian Genocide. By taking it down temporarily to get rid of that reference, Turkish officials have once again inadvertently publicized the Armenian Genocide to a worldwide audience, much beyond the four walls of the U.N.