The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

ARMENIAN AUTHORS COMING TO UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-DEARBORN

Dearborn Press and Guide, MI
Oct 6 2015

Published: Tuesday, October 06, 2015

By Teresa Duhl
Special to the Press & Guide

In Turkey, a 100-year-old Armenian woman, named Asiya, still resides
in her family's hometown of Chunkush. Not far away, a new school was
erected in 2014. The connection between this new school and Asiya
brings the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide into sharp
focus. New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian met Asiya
when he visited Turkey in 2013. In two Washington Post op-ed pieces,
he wrote about Asiya's story and the anger he felt when he saw the
school for the first time.

In 1915, Turkish and Kurdish killing squads rounded up the 10,000
Armenians living in Chunkush. They took them to the very spot where
the new school now stands, at the edge of a ravine about two hours
from Chunkush. At the pit of the ravine is the Dudan Crevasse.

Asiya's mother was among the Armenians taken. She stood at the edge of
the ravine holding her infant daughter. What did she see? Her neighbors
and family pushed or stabbed into the crevasse? Did she look around at
the frightened faces next to her? Perhaps she closed her eyes. What
sounds did she hear? Screams, shouting, gunshots, the thud of bodies
thrown onto other bodies? Was Asiya crying in her arms? What did she
feel? Fear, rage? Would it be possible to feel peace?

One thing is certain, at the edge of the ravine, she waited for the
force, whether bullet, bayonet, or boot, that would thrust her into
the Dudan Crevasse below. She held her daughter and waited. She did
this in the same space that, 100 years later, would be the home of
a new, gleaming elementary school.

But death did not come. One of the Kurds found her attractive, so he
pulled her from the line. He married her and raised Asiya as his own
daughter. Asiya and her mother were saved from death, but they also
had to hide their Armenian heritage for the remainder of their days.

Even in 2013, when Bohjalian first met Asiya, she would not speak of
her Armenian heritage with him, he said.

Bohjalian suggests the new school was built to cover up the mass
grave and the larger history of Turkey's orchestrated slaughter of
1.5 million Armenians.

"I do not know the thinking behind the placement of the Yenikoy
elementary school. But I have my suspicions. I would not be surprised
if next year when I visit, the crevasse has been filled in: the
evidence of a crime of seismic magnitude forever buried," he wrote
in 2014.

Whether the school has been erected out of genuine need or as a
means of covering up the evil that took place at the Dudan Ravine,
its existence is ironic. A school now marks the unmarked mass grave
of 10,000 Armenians. An institution of knowledge serves as the symbol
of a space where heinous acts of ignorance were perpetrated.

"The irony, however, is this: It will no longer take complex directions
or GPS coordinates to find the 10,000 dead at Dudan. All you will
need to tell someone is to visit the Yenikoy elementary school. Go
stand by the playground. The dead are right there," wrote Bohjalian.

Though, as of yet, he has not made Asiya's story into a novel,
Bohjalian has written 18 books, including one that focuses on the
Armenian Genocide, "The Sandcastle Girls." He and eight other Armenian
authors will present at the Book and Author Festival at the University
of Michigan-Dearborn on Saturday.

The festival is one of several events organized this year by
the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee of Greater Detroit to
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the Armenian
Genocide. For Dearborn, the festival is at least the third
commemorative event this year. In April, the committee hosted a
remembrance at Edsel Ford High School featuring actor and author Eric
Bogosian and journalist Robert Fisk. In May, the Catholicos Aram I,
one of two pontiffs who rules the Armenian Apostolic Church, visited
St. Sarkis.

The Book and Author Festival is the result of a partnership between
the committee and the university's Armenian Research Center. According
to the university's website, It is the only Armenian research facility
associated with an American university.

The festival will take place from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. at the
university's Kochoff Hall. The morning session, which runs until 12:30
p.m., will feature Michelle Andonian, Christopher Atamian, Robert
George Koolakian, Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy, and Scout Tufankjian. The
afternoon session begins at 1:30 p.m. and features Bohjalian, Matthew
Karanian, Nancy Kricorian and Aline Ohanesian. Each session will
include the authors' presentations, as well as a question and answer
period and opportunity for book signings. Admission to the festival
is free, but lunch must be ordered and purchased in advance. For more
information on the festival, contact Gerald Ottenbreit at 313-593-5181.

That same evening, the authors will gather for the Authors' Banquet
at Pine Lake Country Club in West Bloomfield. Tickets for this
event are limited and cost $60 per person. For information on the
banquet, contact Gloria Korkoian at 313-730-6698 or Tamar Kadian
at 248-723-5520. Fliers for both events are posted at the Armenian
Genocide Centennial Committee of Greater Detroit Facebook page.

http://www.pressandguide.com/articles/2015/10/06/news/doc5613c84a38ea3724202925.txt

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

TURKS RELEASE ANOTHER BOOK DENYING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Posted By: adminPosted date: October 12, 2015in: News & Articles

Turkey is editing history by publishing "historical" books that don't
contain information about the genocide.

Another book has been released within the scope of Turkey's state
policy of denial of the Armenian Genocide with the title "The 100th
Year of the Armenian Question: Claims, Lies and Truths".

As reports ife.org.tr, the book contains 15 articles reflecting on
the Armenian Question and Turkish-Armenian relations from the social,
political and historical perspectives, writes ermenihaber.am.

The book is obviously devoted to the provisions of the policy of
denial.

It is mentioned that the need for writing such a book emerged because
"the Armenian Question is still current, as in the past, though 100
years have already passed."

The book was compiled by 15 authors

http://www.ragmamoul.net/news-in-english/turks-release-another-book-denying-the-armenian-genocide/

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

Euractiv , EU
Oct 16 2015

Human Rights Court: Denial of Armenian genocide is not a crime


The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday (15 October) that
a Turkish politician should not have been prosecuted for denying that
the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 was a
genocide.

Switzerland had violated the Turkish politician's right to freedom of
speech by convicting him for denying that the killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks in 1915 amounted to genocide, the Court ruled.

In a landmark free speech ruling, the ECHR judges ruled by 10 votes to
seven that Dogu Perincek, chairman of Turkey's Patriotic Party, should
never have been convicted of racial discrimination by a Swiss court
for saying that the "Armenian genocide is a great international lie".

Perincek was convicted and fined in 2007 after a series of press
conferences on the topic, which the ECHR ruled was an infringement on
his right to free speech.

In its judgement, the court said Perincek's statements related to an
issue of "public interest and did not amount to a call for hatred or
intolerance ... and could not be regarded as affecting the dignity of
the members of the Armenian community to the point of requiring a
criminal law response".

The court made a clear distinction with Holocaust denial, whose
specific history meant it could always be "seen as a form of
incitement to racial hatred" in certain countries.

Its judges have earlier noted that the historical facts of the
Holocaust, "such as the existence of gas chambers" were "considered
clearly established by an international jurisdiction".

Sensitive debate

The events of 1915 are a highly sensitive issue both in Turkey and
among Armenians in Armenia and in the diaspora. Muslim Turkey accepts
that Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces during World
War One, but denies there was any systematic attack on civilians
amounting to genocide.

Perincek tweeted his reaction, presenting the case as part of a
national struggle reaching back into the early years of the 20th
century when the modern Turkish state emerged.

"This is not a historical debate or legal dispute. This is a defence
of the country. A fight for independence!" he said.

The Strasbourg-based court said in a statement it had ruled that it
was not necessary to criminally convict Perincek to protect the rights
of the Armenian community.

"The Swiss courts appeared to have censured Mr Perincek simply for
voicing an opinion that diverged from the established ones in
Switzerland, and the interference with his right to freedom of
expression had taken the serious form of a criminal conviction," the
court said.

Perincek had been ordered to pay a number of fines, suspended for two
years, and 1,000 Swiss francs in compensation to the
Switzerland-Armenia Association for non-pecuniary damage.

Decision left to international criminal courts

The ECHR said it did not have the authority to rule on whether the
Armenian killings were a genocide or not, which was a job for
international criminal courts.

It also accepted that "the dignity of the victims and the dignity and
identity of modern-day Armenians were protected by Article 8" of the
European Convention on Human Rights.

But it ruled that in the specific circumstances of the case, a
democratic society should not have gone as far as prosecuting Perincek
over his comments.

"The context in which they were made had not been marked by heightened
tensions or special historical overtones in Switzerland," the ruling
said.

"The Swiss courts appeared to have censured Mr Perincek simply for
voicing an opinion that diverged from the established ones in
Switzerland," it added.

The ECHR's Grand Chamber ruling is final and binding on all Council of
Europe members.

Perincek's lawyer Laurent Pech has earlier said that his client
"neither contested nor defended the massacres," but merely denied that
the Ottoman authorities of the time had a genocidal intention.

Armenia: Judgement is 'very good result'

Even though the ECHR ruling went in Perincek's favour, it was welcomed
by Armenia's government, which said that although the Turkish
politician was exonerated, the court had recognised Armenians right to
protection against hate speech.

"It means that states in Europe can punish Armenian genocide denial if
it is calculated to incite violence or racial disharmony," Armenia's
prosecutor general Gevorg Kostanyan said in a statement.

"The judgement is a very good result for Armenia and for Armenians," he added.

That interpretation was backed by Geoffrey Robertson, the high-profile
British lawyer representing Armenia, who said the ruling clearly
stated Armenians had "a right to respect for their history".

The Swiss authorities were indeed wrong to prosecute Perincek,
Robertson added, but only because he was "a worthless provocateur".


Background

The European Parliament backed a motion earlier this year that calls
the massacre a century ago of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman
Turkish forces a "genocide".

MEPs stressed the need for Turkey to recognise the Armenian genocide,
so as to pave way for `genuine reconciliation'.

Muslim Turkey agrees that Christian Armenians were killed in clashes
with Ottoman forces that began on 15 April, 1915, when large numbers
of Armenians lived in the empire ruled by Istanbul, but denies that
this amounted to genocide.

Some European and South American countries use the term to describe
the killings, but the United States and some others, keen to maintain
good relations with an important ally, avoid doing so. Germany has
long resisted using the term `genocide' but the government recently
changed its mind.


Turkey is a candidate country to join the 28-nation EU but accession
talks have dragged on for years with little progress.

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/justice-home-affairs/human-rights-court-denial-armenian-genocide-not-crime-318582

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

xxxx the eu
EuroTopics, EU
Oct 18 2015

Holocaust not more important than Armenian genocide


The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that denying the
Armenian genocide is not an incitement to racial hatred and should
therefore not be punishable by law. With their decision the judges are
making awkward comparisons, the centre-left daily Tages-Anzeiger
complains: "The problem is not so much that a person who denies the
Armenian genocide will now go unpunished. ¦ Far more worrying is that
the ECHR is treating genocides differently. Those who deny the
Holocaust are automatically inciting racial hatred, but those who deny
the Armenian genocide don't necessarily do so with the intention of
inciting hatred. This distinction is incomprehensible. Whether the
Armenians and Turks will ever reconcile is questionable. The ECHR's
ruling has weakened the position of the minority and therefore
achieved nothing in terms of mediating between the two peoples."

http://www.eurotopics.net/en/home/presseschau/archiv/article/ARTICLE171561-Holocaust-not-more-important-than-Armenian-genocide

[londontsi]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

xxxx the eu
EuroTopics, EU
Oct 18 2015

Holocaust not more important than Armenian genocide


The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that denying the
Armenian genocide is not an incitement to racial hatred and should
therefore not be punishable by law. With their decision the judges are
making awkward comparisons, the centre-left daily Tages-Anzeiger
complains: "The problem is not so much that a person who denies the
Armenian genocide will now go unpunished. ¦ Far more worrying is that
the ECHR is treating genocides differently. Those who deny the
Holocaust are automatically inciting racial hatred, but those who deny
the Armenian genocide don't necessarily do so with the intention of
inciting hatred. This distinction is incomprehensible. Whether the
Armenians and Turks will ever reconcile is questionable. The ECHR's
ruling has weakened the position of the minority and therefore
achieved nothing in terms of mediating between the two peoples."


http://www.eurotopics.net/en/home/pr...enian-genocide

We should hire an international agent provocateur and go through the same process as that Turkish bastard did and test the whole morality of that decision.

.

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

We should hire an international agent provocateur and go through the same process as that Turkish bastard did and test the whole morality of that decision.

.

Your own signature seems to address this issue in the sense that it has become a political issue and not a moral one. I think this decision speaks volumes about how we can expect to be received by the West as you can clearly see how corrupt that system really is. The point of this ruling is quite clear and that point is that only jjeewwss can be the victims of genocide and everyone else simply does not matter. The suffering of Hebrews is real suffering and everyone else is just making stuff up.... Recently we have seen some very clear indications from the west regarding our rejection by it. The absence of western presidents on April 24 in Armenia(except France) and now this ruling clearly show that we will not be welcomed with open arms into Europe. The hypocrisy here is quite outrageous but who is even talking about it?

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

I am really surprised that no one seems to care about this ruling.

[Artashes]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

I am really surprised that no one seems to care about this ruling.

They (Europe) sold us down the road so they could share in the spoils of the 1915 genocide committed against us. What you saw in the ruling was yet another confirmation of the selling out of the Armenian people's. It (the ruling & the court) was nothing more than a dog & pony show.
After a 100 years of the 2nd most studied genocide , this self serving ?court? couldn't figure out it was a genocide ???
Nothing but a dog & pony show.

Consider ... USA/Europe , are engaged in the criminal act of destroying Syria. Do you think this sickening excuse for a court is not also part and parcel a criminal institution designed to ligitemize the criminal behavior of Europe/USA ?
Fraudulence and criminality go hand in hand.

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

"MY HOME, MY ARMENIA"

The Sunday Times (London), UK
October 25, 2015 Sunday

This 105-year-old man is one of the last survivors of the Armenian
genocide. The photographer Diana Markosianpresented him and other
survivors with images of the land they were forced to leave a century
ago and have not set foot in since

Movses Haneshyan, 105, approaches a landscape produced by Diana
Markosian. He pauses, looks at the image, and begins to sing:
"My home... my Armenia."

It's the first time Movses has seen an image of his home village,
Kebussieh, in Turkey, in a century. He fled in 1915 at the age of
five. He now lives across the border in the Republic of Armenia.

Markosian says that even though her subjects were very young at the
time of the genocide, they have powerful memories of the traumatic
events These beautifully composed pictures are a stark reminder of one
of the most controversial and disputed episodes of the last century:
the armenian genocide, which began 100 years ago. the tragic story of
the armenians is etched deeply on the faces of the people photographed
here. they can neither forgive, nor forget.

it is widely accepted that between 800,000 and 1.5m ottoman armenians
were killed as the ottoman empire crumbled - though the figure has
been fiercely disputed by successive turkish governments, who have
always denied that a genocide took place.

the campaign against the armenians started in the spring of 1915
and it quickly turned into mass murder. While turkey accepts that
deportations of armenians took place - they were suspected of colluding
with russia as the empire collapsed - it insists that killing happened
on both sides. they say there was no premeditation in the deaths,
no systematic attempt to destroy a people. it remains illegal in
turkey for journalists to call it a "genocide".

the european parliament recognises that a genocide took place, but
the Un won't go so far, calling it an "atrocity crime". neither the
british nor american governments describe it as "genocide".

For this project, the armenian-american photographer diana markosian
travelled first to the republic of armenia to meet some of the
remaining survivors. since the massacres began in 1915, she knew she
would find only a handful of people who witnessed the horrors.

tracking them down was a Herculean task, she says.

"the armenian government was unable to provide any information; it said
this was confidential. so i looked for armenian voter registrations
online to see who was born before 1915. i had a few dozen names and
the villages in armenia where they lived."

once she found them, she asked about their lives in their former
homeland - part of present-day turkey - from which they were expelled.

then she travelled into turkey to photograph the landmarks and villages
they described. born in moscow, but educated in the Us, markosian spoke
to the survivors in russian. she interviewed them at length about their
experiences and they were able to recall the events in great detail.

"When i met movses, mariam and yepraksia, they guided me back to their
past. i told them i was travelling to their native lands, and they
asked me to help fulfil their wishes. movses gave me a hand-drawn
map of his village in turkey and asked me to find his church and
leave his image there. He hadn't seen his home in a century. When i
returned to his village, not too far from syria, i found everything
movses had described to me: the sheep, the fruit he remembered eating,
the sea. i even found his church, which is now in ruins."

movses fled his birthplace of kebussieh in 1915, aged five. He
remembers when ottoman soldiers entered his village. "i was with my
father, holding his hand. Half the road was covered with dead people."

Like movses, markosian's other subjects had personal requests to make.

"mariam asked me to bring back turkish soil, so she could be buried
with it. and yepraksia wanted help finding her older brother, from
whom she was separated after the genocide. i never found him, but
i did come back with a story for movses and a container of dirt for
mariam. When she opened it, she thanked me and said, 'you've brought
the smell of my village to me.'" once she had taken pictures of their
villages, markosian made large prints of them, brought them back to
armenia and photographed her subjects with them.

"they are still angry," markosian says.

"they witnessed deportation and death and now they face continued
denial of the genocide. i am not sure if they will ever forgive the
turks." n these pages Yepraksia gevorgyan, who is believed to be 110 -
she fled the massacres in 1915 with her family and no ID documents -
is pictured in present-day armenia, with a picture of the ruins of
the medieval armenian city of ani, which lies in modern turkey's Kars
province. her father was killed as they fled, and her mother died
shortly after they reached their destination. "I remember the river,"
she says. "I saw the turks kill the armenians, throwing their bodies in
the water" above Movses Haneshyan, 105, touches a picture of Kebussieh,
his former home in Turkey below Movses at home in armenia.

"Half the road was covered with dead people," he recalls above Mariam
Sahakyan, 101, was born in the village of Sason, in Turkey, in 1914.

when the genocide began the following year, the infant Mariam
and her family were sheltered by a local Kurdish family, before
they eventually fled to Syria in 1918. She later moved to armenia,
where she is pictured here below Mariam's family present her with
Markosian's picture of Sason. She had also asked the photographer:
"bring back soil for me to be buried in" Mariam, who now lives in
Armenia with her family, sits in front of the image of Sason

[Haykakan]

Re: The 100th Anniversary - and Events to Mark it

UK - Prince Charles greets Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and
Catholicos Garegin II during an ecumenical service at Westminster
Abbey, London, 28Oct2015.

The service was part of worldwide events marking the 100th anniversary
of the genocide, which began on April 24, 1915 with mass arrests of
Armenian political leaders and intellectuals in Constantinople. Up to
1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were murdered or
starved to death in the following years.

The most important events marking the genocide centennial in and
outside Armenia took place on April 24, 2015. The Turkish government,
which strongly denies that the 1915 massacres constituted genocide,
tried to deflect the resulting international spotlight by holding its
annual commemoration of a major World War One-era battle on the same
day.

Ankara had traditionally celebrated the Turkish victory in the
1915-1916 Battle of Gallipoli on April 25. The Armenian government
condemned it for moving up this year's Gallipoli ceremony by one day.

Charles was among a host of mostly Muslim foreign leaders who took
part in the ceremony at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
invitation. His participation upset many in Armenia and its worldwide
Diaspora.

One of the likely reasons why Queen Elizabeth's heir apparent took
part in the Westminster Abbey service is his close rapport with Armen
Sarkissian, the Armenian ambassador to the United Kingdom who has
lived in London since the early 1990s. Sarkissian was instrumental in
Charles' 2013 visit to Armenia.

Statements by the press offices of President Sarkisian and Westminster
Abbey did not list any senior British government officials among those
who attended the service. Their apparent absence reflected the current
and previous British governments' refusal to recognize the Armenian
genocide.