News for April 15, 1915

News for April 24, 1915

I put together this page since this year, on this specific date, I was there.
I was at Ottawa along with many other Armenians on Saturday, April 24, 2004 for the yearly protest against Turkey and to remember those who have suffered and died because of them.

The newspaper clippings below explain better. All I can say is thank you Canada, and thank you Quebec.

The following has been borrowed without permission, but I hope nobody minds. You can search for more on your favorite search engine, but these come from my local newspapers.
I have bolded some parts.

Why shouldn't MPs acknowledge genocide?
Sidenote: MPs are our ministers at the Canadian Parliament
The Globe And Mail

The House of Commons has caused a furor by acknowledging, in a free vote this week, that Armenians were victims of genocide in 1915. The furor is more telling than the acknowledgement. Realpolitik (The Turkish side) apparently dictates that truth does not exist, that each generation lives in a historical vacuum, and that pondering such issues is a matter best reserved for artists and historians rather than mere legislators. To challenge these dictates is to reveal oneself as naive and too immature for real leadership

Yet the legislators, who voted 153-68 in favour of a private member's bill from the Bloc Quebecois (Sidenote : a political party here in Quebec) , were merely stating a historical fact. They were not commiting Canada to monetery payments. They were not apologizing on behalf of another generation. They were engaging in a simple act of memory on behalf of victims who have descendants living in Canada, an act that is controversial only because of the Turkish government's offensive 89-year-long denial.

The genocide of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was the first attempt to murder an entire nation in a century riven with them. It was a blueprint for Hitler. So appalled were Canadians at the time that they bent their rigid immigration rules and permitted 100 Armenian orphans to come to Georgetown, Ont., and live with farm families. This uncharacteristic generosity toward allegedly inferior peoples was dubbed "Canada's Nobble Experiment." The Georgetown Boys, as they were known grew up and became good Canadians who raised families, paid taxes and voted in elections.

Today's Canada is a different kind of experiment. It is one in which all people are welcome, not so much for nobble reasons as from enlightened self-interest: Give us your educated, your upwardly mobile, your ambitious. In such a country, the hard choices of Realpolitik become more difficult than ever. Why? Because Canada, if it is to succeed an an experiment, must be based on respect for human rights. And if this diverse country stresses human rights on the democratic scene, it can hardly deny their value in the larger world.

Prime Minister Paul Martin, in trying to give more power to backbench MPs, is allowing free votes where confidence in the government is not at issue. With this freedom comes responsibility. It may be that, in future, MPs will attempt to go further afield, in ways that might affect Canada's legitimate foreign-policy interests.

But in this case, it is hard to see what was irresponsible in this statement of principle. Genocide is a current issue for a world that just commemorated the 10th anniversary of the attempted annihilation of the Tutsi people in Rwanda. Canada has obligations beyond its borders. It was instrumental in the creation two years ago of the International Criminal Court.

In spite of scaremongering from some high-powered businesses, it strains credulity to think that Canadians firms will lose big contracts or that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's relationship with Turkey will suffer over the resolution. Should the Canada that risked its relationship with its closest ally when it spurned the United State's call to war in Iraq develop amnesia to avoid reprisals from Turkey? For the record, the Liberal government (Sidenote : The Liberals are a political party in Canada, and have currently most of the votes) of Jean Chretien (Sidenote : the previous prime minister, before Paul Martin) said in 1999 that the tragedy of 1915 "was committed with the intent to destroy a national group ..." That is the very definition of genocide. And Canada's relationship with Turkey survived.

Human beings are capable of the worst atrocities, but there are always some who do not forget. No foreign country, ally or not, can deny Canada the right to bear witness.

Saturday, April 24, 2004, Page A22

The Truth About The Armenian Genocide
The National Post

Wednesday's parliamentary resolution recognizing the Turkish slaughter of Armenians during the First World War as a genocide and a crime against humanity may seem obscure to many Canadians. But in Turkey, the issue is extraordinarily sensitive. Most non-Turkish historians agree that Turks killed up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, in some cases burning them alive in churches or forcing them into wilderness, where they died of starvation and exposure. The Turkish government, however, claims the real number of deaths was just 300,000, and that even these fatalities arose not from genocide but from Turkish "self-defense" against Armenians allied with Russia (Sidenote : in other words, it was war and both sides lost people equally). Though widely debunked, this national myth is precious to the Turks, which explains why Ankara went ballistic yesterday, accusing Canadian legislators of being "narrow-minded" and sowing "hatred".

Paul Martin knew this was coming, In 2000, when the U.S. Congress considered a similar resolution, Ankara threatened to cut America's access to military bases (Sidenote : they also threatened that no U.S. soldier would leave Turkey's border alive).

Prior to the vote, Mr. Martin had his Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, twist arms in an effort to defeat the motion. But to his credit, the Prime Minister ultimately refused to declare this a whipped vote -- despite the fact there are a number of Canadian companies with business interests in Turkey, including Bombardier which has a $335-million contract with Ankara's public transportation system. Ignoring Realpolitik, many Liberals voted their conscience, and the motion passed by a 153 to 68 margin.

All of this leaves us conflicted. On one hand, the MPs who voted for Wednesday's motion are certainly on the right side of history -- and there was something gratifying about seeing them buck their party bosses to speak up for the truth. On the other hand, Parliament's job is to make laws -- not decide issues best left for historians and filmmakers.

This is not to say that governments should never take a position on historical events. In Germany, it is illegal to deny the existence of the Holocaust, a law arguably justified by the singularly evil crimes of the Nazis. And in other Western nations, governments have properly recognized the campaigns

of slaughter their forebears inflicted on aboriginals. But these are exceptional instances. Our worry is that, with the passage of Wednesday's resolution, we will now witness a parade of aggrieved ethnic groups coming before Parliament, each seeking recognition of its own historical tragedy. Recall that millions of Ukrainians were starved by Stallin in the 1930s. Half-a-million Rwandan Tutsis were killed at the hands of Hutus in 1994. In 1948, Hindus and Muslims killed one another by truckload in South Asia. (Sidenote : that last one isn't genocide, but a war. There is a big difference) Is our Parliament to serve as history's scorekeeper, duly tallying all of these massacres and the hundreds more like them?

As for the Turkish government, we would urge that it stop insisting on blinkered view of history. Even within the Turkish community itself, a small group of scholars has emerged in recent years to challenge the official line. Ankara should pay them heed. Though it is not our Parliament's job to point it out, Turkey's refusal to recognize the 1915 Armenian massacre is a stain on the country's international reputation.

Friday, April 23, 2004

Uruguay Parliament Recognizes Armenian Genocide

YEREVAN (Yerkir)- the lower chamber of Uruguay’s parliament approved a bill on march 10, which indirectly recognizes the Armenian Genocide. The bill calls for April 24 to be "the commemoration Day of Armenians martyred in 1915," and obligates the state owned media to "cover those events" on that day. There is no reference to "genocide" in the wording of the bill, though parliament speeches in favor of the bill did not avoid calling the genocide, a "genocide". The resolution will become a law with the president's signature.
In 2000, Uruguay’s Senate unanimously passed a resolution marking "April 24 a national day of Remembrance for the Armenian Genocide".
In 1965, the Armenian National Committee of Uruguay advanced the passage of an Armenian Genocide resolution in Uruguay's parliament - to mark the first time a country officially recognized the genocide of Armenians.
At the time, the author of that resolution Senator Dr. Alberto Sid, said that the bill aimed to register Uruguay's official position on the Armenian Genocide as a crime against humanity.
Interestingly, the world’s first April 24 demonstration also took place in Uruguay, in 1964. (Sidenote: It took a while for us to get organized. Armenians fled to many countries around the world, but that won't stop determination. It's not something Armenians will forget no matter what Turkey does.)