Armenian Genocide Commemoration at New York City Hall

[Joseph]

PRESS RELEASE
Date: March 25, 2008
Armenian National Committee of New York
P.O. Box 770-693, Woodside, NY 11377
Contact: Doug Geogerian
Tel: 646-468-9061

Armenian Genocide Commemoration at New York City Hall

---Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan and Dr. Henry Theriault to
Address New York Armenian Community

New York, NY-The Armenian National Committee of New York will host the
93rd Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide at City Hall Chambers on
April 25th at 5:30 P.M. The evening will feature Professor Henry
Theriault of Worcester State College as the main speaker and
Archbishop Oshagan Choloyan, who will address the community and give
the invocation.

"While causing New York's Armenian community to reflect thoughtfully
on the horrible catastrophe that befell our people, Dr. Theriault will
also connect the Armenian Cause to the broader struggle for advancing
international human rights," said Doug Geogerian of the Armenian
National Committee of New York.

Elected official at the local, state and federal levels will attend
and pay tribute to the systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians, a
genocide, which the perpetrator, the Turkish government, continues to
deny to this day. The commemoration will also include musical work
performed in memory of the crime committed against the Armenian
nation.

The evening's main speaker will be Dr. Henry Theriault, who has
written extensively on the subject of genocide and the dispossession
of indigenous peoples. While he has dealt at length with the Armenian
case, which concerns his own ancestry, Theriault's work is broad and
examines the impact of genocide against Africans, Native Americans and
other victim groups.

Committed under the cover of War War I, the Young Turk government
rounded up hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, artists and civic
leaders on April 24, 1915 only to have them murdered. This massacre
ushered in a state-planned campaign to eradicate the Armenian people
from their traditional homeland of 3,000 years, marking what is
commonly referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The Turkish Government has since gone to extraordinary lengths to deny
this crime against humanity. Its world-wide campaign of public
misinformation has especially focused on influencing media outlets and
governmental bodies in the United States, where Ankara has spent tens
of millions of dollars to distort the historical record and cover up
the "murder of a nation."

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is the largest and
most influential Armenian American grassroots political
organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices,
chapters and supporters throughout the United States and affiliated
organizations around the world, the ANCA actively advances the
concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of
issues.
####

[Joseph]

http://www.queenstribune.com/news/1207239571.html

Residents Protest Armenian Genocide

By Juliet Werner

The New York Armenian Home in Flushing feels more like a community center than a nursing home. Residents trade memories of Armenia, or “our country,” during meals. In the evening, the men and women, many in their 90s, dance in the traditional Armenian style; arguments over the correct steps frequently overpower the music.

“It’s called an adult care facility,” case manager Karine Barsoumian said. “But it’s a kindergarten.”
Barsoumian spends many hours a week with the home’s 79 residents, all members of what the home’s Web site calls, the “global Armenian community.”

“It’s not Armenian Home, it’s International Home,” she said. Residents speak Armenian, Arabic, Russian and Bulgarian. Turkish is occasionally heard as well, but not without opposition.

“They’ll say, ‘don’t use that language,’” Barsoumian explained.

Several of the residents are survivors of the Armenian Genocide carried out by the “Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire from 1915-1923 that killed 1.5 million.
Onorik Eminian, 95, witnessed the death of her parents and siblings. The Red Cross picked her up and escorted her to an orphanage. She later made her way to Greece, and, finally, to the United States in 1930.

In anticipation of the 93rd Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide scheduled for April 27 in Times Square, several residents of the Armenian Home shared their stories of survival with the press on Sunday. Eminian became anxious as soon as she saw a group had gathered.

“Are there Turks among you?” she wanted to know.
Eminian’s paranoia has only heightened as a result of an October 2007 trip to Washington D.C. where she was harassed by a group of Turkish protestors. The Armenian National Committee had invited Eminian, along with other survivors, to the capital for the House of Representatives’ Oct. 10 vote on House Resolution 106.

The resolution, which called upon the President to “ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and for other purposes,” was approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee by 27 to 21 despite President Bush’s warning that it would strain America’s relationship with Turkey, an ally in the War in Iraq. Democratic support exists in the Senate, but the resolution has lost momentum.

“It’s time has passed,” Dr. Denis Papazian, Director of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan – Dearborn, said. “We are in the election cycle where this issue will be placed on the back burner. The Turkish government made a big fuss about the resolution, and the administration caved in. The spin doctors tried to make the resolution seem anti-patriotic, and succeeded to some extent. There is no use fighting a losing battle at this point. Better to declare victory for its passage through the Foreign Relations Committee than to take it back on the floor during this administration and having the Armenians look unpatriotic.”

Eminian, once she agreed to tell her story, revealed an intense patriotism.

“Don’t forget the American navy is the best in the world,” she said. “I’m not lying what they did to me.”

Perouz Kalousdian, 98, also traveled to D.C. to support the resolution, but quickly slips back into apathy.
“They can feel sorry, that’s all. What can they do,”

Kalousdian said. “We’re in America. We’re saved. But I never forget.”
According to Papazian, forgetting exonerates the genocide’s perpetrators.

“The last stage of genocide is denial,” Papazian said. “You counter opponents of Armenian genocide recognition by presenting the truth, evidence, reason and perseverance. It is a fight of memory against forgetting.”

The fight isn’t over and the resolution has a better chance if the next administration is Democratic – both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama favor it. But Jenny Akopyan, the Armenian Home assistant director who accompanied the survivors to Washington, isn’t holding her breath.
“If they ask us to bring residents [again] we will do our best,” Akopyan said. “But time passes by and they’re not getting younger.”

The April 27 event in Times Square is free and open to the public. For more information call Linda Millman Guller at (203) 454-9800.