Eilian Williams - Press Release
Nor Serount Cultural Association
C.H.A.K.(Centre of Halabja)
c/o The Temple of Peace, Cathays Park, Cardiff, Wales
Tel:07718982732
Press Release
A Recognition of the Armenian Genocide made public in the House Of Commons
The 60th anniversary of the UN Genocide convention was marked in the House of Commons this week, on tuesday, 9th December, by a public recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Socialist Party of Kurdistan (PSK). Participating in the event were Professor Khatchatur Pilikian, author Desmond Fernandes, Akif Wan of the KNK and Adnan Kochar of CHAK. Lord Hylton chaired and Andrew Pelling MP participated.
The PSK statement read :"Turkey has not confronted its history and is adamant and stubborn in its behaviour. It is less than a century since the Armenian Genocide happened in front of the eyes of the world. This shameful act for humanity was condemned by the parliaments of many countries. Each time the Turkish government and its parliament has responded to these condemnations with anger. Excluding few conscientious intellectuals, the so called intellectuals and artists of Turkey have followed the footsteps of their politicians and tried to hide, deny, even falsify history and are using every trick in the book to blame the Armenians.
Of course, in Turkey, the example of a shameful act is not just the Armenian Genocide, but what was done to the Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds are crimes against humanity too. During the genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians got their share in this slaughter" (whole statement below)
Professor Khatchatur Pilikian in his major speech said:
"The literary genius John Milton, whose 400th anniversary of birth is exactly today, but it will be marked tomorrow at the Library, Conway Hall, once uttered this eye-opening remark in his Apology of 1648: “they who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness.”
Even in the first decade of our 21st century, the oppressors’ mantra has remained essentially the same: ‘if you don’t like to be oppressed, then accept your fate. If not, you better leave your abode, home and country. At best we will encourage such a move, and at worst we will force you to leave’. In other words, you are not free to stay and try to change the status quo of iniquity. If you choose the latter and struggle for your human rights -- enshrined in International Laws, Covenants and Conventions, not only as an individual, but also as a people, especially when diverse from the ruling and the oppressing class -- then individual terror or even murder might be your Damoclean sword. Otherwise deportation and probably state terror leading to Genocide might befall your ethnic community.
That is exactly why the eminent Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in January last year. And that is what the recent Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, Recep Erdogan really meant, on November 4, this year, when he warned the disenchanted citizens of the Republic in general and the oppressed minorities in particular, saying: "Turkey consists of one nation, one flag and one land and that anyone who is not in agreement with this should leave the country". On November 10, 2008, less than a week after Erdogan’s warning, his Defence Minister Vecdi Gönül, was in
Curiously enough, the recent Defence Minister of Turkey chose to forget what Ataturk himself had thought about such state terror accomplishments. The Turkish historian and sociologist Taner Akcam informs: “Mustafa Kemal has dozens of speeches in which he defines the treatments reserved to Armenians as "cowardice", or "barbarity", and names these treatments "massacre". (See T. Akcam’s: The Geemnocide of Armenians and the Silence of the Turks, From Empire to Republic, A Shameful Act.)
"We all know of course that Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term "genocide" in 1943, did not mince his words, stating that genocide “happened so many times… First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action." (Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 350)
According to the Turkish Justice Ministry, 1,700 people were tried in 2006 alone, under the racist Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Prosecutors of the status quo have a field day in prohibiting so-called “insulting Turkishness”, utilizing Article 301 to silence those valiant intellectuals who dare challenge the false premises of the official state denials of historical truths related with the Empire’s and the Republic’s tragic acts of ethnic and cultural annihilations. Hrant Dink himself was victimised by Article 301, before his assassination. Not surprisingly, therefore, that the eminent Turkish civil rights campaigner and publisher Ragip Zarakolu was found guilty of “insulting the institutions of the
....." Here again Raphael Lemkin’s thoughtful contribution is welcome: “I understood that the function of memory is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience […] It became clear to me that the diversity of nations, religious groups and races is essential to civilization because every one of those groups has a mission to fulfill and a contribution to make in terms of culture.”
All the above notwithstanding, UNESCO has been warning the world, for decades now, that the greatest shame of the current civilisation is the fact that thousands of children die of hunger every single day. Today that number has reached the staggering 44,000 hungry children dying each day of the year, as if a
Meanwhile billions pour into the pockets of the warmongers of modern metropolises. These warlords of Mammon would eventually thrive in an ‘Inorganic Paradise’—a ‘paradise’ void of universal human rights and sustained by legalised torture; glorification of violence geared towards maximising profit at any cost; xenophobic state terror protected with religious fervour. And, topping as if the macabre orgy, genocide has been already tested, for a century now, to become the collateral damage of its inorganically modernised and sweat-shopped ‘global village’ of hunger and debt."
THE ON-GOING PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL GENOCIDE
The rulers of Turkey are unaware of what century and what kind of world they live in as once again the latest developments have showed. As if they are behind times for a hundred years or even more. As if they are unaware of international law and the development of goodwill between different languages , cultures that became common value of humanity within the past century. Germany apologised to the Jews and the world public opinion about the genocide of the Jews. To make sure that it is not forgotten, genocide monuments erected in Germany and the concrete evidence of this tragedy, ensures that concentration camps are protected and open to the public. Putting it another way, Germany has confronted its history. Australia has apologised for what was done to its indigenous population, Aborigines, they too confronted their history.
It may not be on the same scale but in our world, no civilised country's intellectuals, rulers are trying to cover-up, deny or defend the genocides against other people which are shameful events in their history. But in Turkey everything is the opposite of this. Turkey has not confronted its history and is adamant and stubborn in its behaviour. It is less than a century since the Armenian Genocide happened in front of the eyes of the world. This shameful act for humanity was condemned by the parliaments of many countries. Each time the Turkish government and its parliament has responded to these condemnations with anger. Excluding few conscientious intellectuals, the so called intellectuals and artists of Turkey have followed the footsteps of their politicians and tried to hide, deny, even falsify history and are using every trick in the book to blame the Armenians.
Of course, in Turkey, the example of a shameful act is not just the Armenian Genocide, but what was done to the Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds are crimes against humanity too. During the genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians got their share in this slaughter. In the following years, that means before the Greek and Turkish governments exchanged populations, the Greeks who were oppressed and threatened were deported from Anatolia in their hundreds of thousands … One of the leading figures carrying out such activities was CELAL BAYAR who was nicknamed 'GALIP HOCA' and was from the CUP (Committee for Union and Progress Party).1 After the war and the exchange of the populations, some Greeks were allowed to stay in Istanbul because some Turks stayed in Western Thrace. [But] most of these Greeks left Istanbul as a result of oppression and the events of 6/7 September which were organised by the state.
After the war, in order to Turkify Anatolia and to establish a unitary state, the second biggest population group, the Kurds, were declared as non-existent. The state was established according to only Turkish elements. Kurdish history, language and culture was banned. The Kurdish peoples just reaction to all this was brutally and bloodily suppressed. After each uprising was put down, the civilian population of the region, without any discrimination – [including] women, children, young and old - were subjected to genocide. For example, after the Sheikh Said rebellion, they killed 20,000 civilians. After the Agri uprising, in Zilan Stream region, a population of more than 30 villages was exterminated. After the 1938 Dersim uprising, 60,000 people, disregarding [the fact that many were] women and children, were bayonetted, shot, herded en masse into the mills and burnt or were killed in caves.
The journalist AYSE HUR recently reported on an interview that had taken place in 1986 with the ex-Foreign Minister of Turkey, IHSAN SABRI CAGLAYANGIL. [He said]: "The Dersimis [i.e. Kurds in the region] had taken refuge in the caves. The (Turkish) army used poison gas. Through the caves entrance ... they were poisoned like rats. Aged from 7 to 70, … the Kurds in Dersim were slaughtered … The [military] operation was bloody. The Dersim case was finished. The government's authority was established in the villages and in Dersim ... Today, anyone can go to Dersim. Gendarma can go, so can you. But lately, especially in the borders region, the Kurds influenced by the external powers started an independence movement. Some Kurds live in Turkey, some in Iran...." (AYSE HUR, 16/11/2008 TARAF GAZETESI).
so they wanted to clear out the Kurds from the region. The appearance of the PKK and its armed struggle was used as a pretext to evacuate and demolish more than 4,000 villages and towns. 3-4 million [Kurdish] people were exiled from their homeland as thousands of 'unsolved murders' of Kurdish intellectuals and patriots occurred that took the form of full massacre. These are the end result of policies that have been implemented over the past 30 years.
The oppression and bans continued along with forced assimilation and Turkification policies. They wanted to wipe out the language, culture – in short, the very existence of the people who lived on their land for thousands of years, who had deep roots and contributed to the civilisation of Anatolia, Iran and Mesopotomia, who had their own distinct and rich
history and language.
Has the situation changed today? No. Today, Turkish statesmen are neither brave enough to confront their history nor to make real changes in their policies that are suitable for our times. They are disregarding world public opinion and international law and carrying on with their policies without fear. Today the system is using the terror that it had created, carrying on with its militarist and racist activities. It is resisting [initiatives aimed at] opening a peaceful path for a solution. They are not allowing [Kurdish] exiles to return to their land. The ban on language and culture is on going. Even today, there is no freedom of expression and organisation for the Kurds. The intellectuals who support them are punished according to the laws such as Turkish Penal Code article 301 and by similar articles.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently visited the Kurdish region and had this to say to the people who asked for cultural and political rights:
"...The ones who don't accept the idea of one state, one nation, one flag, should leave the country ...".
In fact, this is an infamous slogan of fascism: "love it or leave it ..".
On 10/11/2008 (The anniversary of Ataturk's death on10/11/1938), the Defense Minister, Mr.VECDI GONUL, who was in Brussels for a meeting, openly claimed that without the genocide of the Armenians and the deportation of the Greeks, there would have been no national state. These are Vecdi Gonul's exact words:
Honestly, there are no Greek or Armenian districts, Greeks or Armenians left in Ankara. Such Greek or Armenian districts don't exist in Istanbul either. Despite all that the ones who stayed behind and how they feel is not a secret. The events that took place in Malatya and murder of HRANT DINK with the knowledge and support of the police and gendarme authorities are still fresh in our minds.
Today, the extermination of the Kurds, and the physical and cultural genocidal policies that are implemented against the Kurds are a continuation of that "NATION BUILDING" mentality. It is obvious that the Turkish statesmen believe that they have not completed the task yet ....
1 Celal Bayar was Prime Minister of Turkey in 1937 & later President in 1950.
THE CRIME AGAINST MULTI-CULTURAL CIVIIZATION
Khatchatur I.
60th Anniversary of the UN Genocide Convention
9th December 2008 In Committee Room 17 of the House of Commons London
Sponsor : Dr. Bob Spink MP (Independent)
Co-organisers: Solidarity with the Victims of All Genocides, (SVAG)
Nor Serount Cultural Association, CHAK (Centre of Halabja), supported by Seyfo Centre
Allow me to announce loud and clear, at the onset: that the alpha and omega of my reflections on Genocide remains this: that deep in my heart I wish Armenians had no such experience to talk about. Indeed I feel perhaps I would even have been a happier human being if peoples all over the world whether Congolese, Nama, Herero, Abyssinians, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Jews, Palestinians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Poles, Serbs, Kossovans, American-Indians of the north and the Indigenous communities of the south, Timorese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Rwandans, Darfurians, and alas many others had also no such terrorising experience. But most importantly, I truly believe that our precious and only world will be a much better place to live, and die for that matter, if that ultimate state terrorism is banished out of existence for all times to come. No wonder this plea, mentioned in an Armenian dictum: “I pray God not to let this evil befall my worst enemy.”
The crucial question remains: to prevent Genocide ever happening again, what kind of human relations humanity should aspire to? Perhaps the first step is what the brave Archbishop Desmond Tutu wants us to consider, saying: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”
Hence the need to choose: to have or not to have a world cleansed of Genocide, that ultimate tool of the oppressor. Furthermore, let us also be aware that it is obscene to let a major inhuman calamity like Genocide monopolize intellectual resources to eventually establish an exploitative industry. Such an obsessive monolithic approach diminishes any cultural heritage—exactly what oppressors and Genocide perpetrators desire most.
An eminent educator and a renowned scholar, Paulo Freire has put that vital choice in perspective: “Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed […] Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognise others as people […] It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the ‘rejects of life’ [...] It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate man, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well) […] For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed […] who are disaffected, who are ‘violent’, ‘barbaric’, ‘wicked’, or ‘ferocious’ when they react to the violence of the oppressors.” (Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Education 1977. Pp 31-32)
I firmly believe that a genuinely humanist Democracy, once best defined as “the rule of the people, by the people, for the people”, might prove to be the only guarantee to obliterate a major raison d’être of exploitative oppression and terrorism, the latter being the parasitic louse of reactionary, deformed democracy. Wherever hopelessness, insecurity and pessimism are injected as ingredients for the idealistic belief in violence, there violence manipulates terror as a cathartic pathos in an anti-historical, solitary action, a pathetically individualistic fetish that is only capable of and encourages an extreme reactionary change of the state/military power, leading to Fascism, the apotheosis for megalomaniac state terrorism—the fuel of Genocide.
Let us not forget that a substantial part of the history of empires or states, whether kingdoms or republics, past and present, especially those that entertain such megalomaniac status, not excluding the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey, is the history of the oppressed and their oppressors.
The literary genius John Milton, whose 400th anniversary of birth is exactly today, but it will be marked tomorrow at the Library, Conway Hall, once uttered this eye-opening remark in his Apology of 1648: “they who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them of their blindness.”
Even in the first decade of our 21st century, the oppressors’ mantra has remained essentially the same: ‘if you don’t like to be oppressed, then accept your fate. If not, you better leave your abode, home and country. At best we will encourage such a move, and at worst we will force you to leave’. In other words, you are not free to stay and try to change the status quo of iniquity. If you choose the latter and struggle for your human rights -- enshrined in International Laws, Covenants and Conventions, not only as an individual, but also as a people, especially when diverse from the ruling and the oppressing class -- then individual terror or even murder might be your Damoclean sword. Otherwise deportation and probably state terror leading to Genocide might befall your ethnic community.
That is exactly why the eminent Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in January last year. And that is what the recent Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, Recep Erdogan really meant, on November 4, this year, when he warned the disenchanted citizens of the Republic in general and the oppressed minorities in particular, saying: "Turkey consists of one nation, one flag and one land and that anyone who is not in agreement with this should leave the country". On November 10, 2008, less than a week after Erdogan’s warning, his Defence Minister Vecdi Gönül, was in Brussels, marking the 70th anniversary of death of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Gönül’s eulogy of Ataturk contained these revealing words: "Would it be possible today to maintain the same national State if the existence of Greeks in the Aegean region and of Armenians in several regions of Turkey had continued as before?"
Curiously enough, the recent Defence Minister of Turkey chose to forget what Ataturk himself had thought about such state terror accomplishments. The Turkish historian and sociologist Taner Akcam informs: “Mustafa Kemal has dozens of speeches in which he defines the treatments reserved to Armenians as "cowardice", or "barbarity", and names these treatments "massacre". (See T. Akcam’s books: The Geemnocide of Armenians and the Silence of the Turks; From Empire to Republic; A Shameful Act.)
We all know of course that Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term "genocide" in 1943, did not mince his words, stating that genocide “happened so many times… First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action." (Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 350)
According to the Turkish Justice Ministry, 1,700 people were tried in 2006 alone, under the racist Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Prosecutors of the status quo have a field day in prohibiting so-called “insulting Turkishness”, utilizing Article 301 to silence those valiant intellectuals who dare challenge the false premises of the official state denials of historical truths related with the Empire’s and the Republic’s tragic acts of ethnic and cultural annihilations. Hrant Dink himself was victimised by Article 301, before his assassination. Not surprisingly, therefore, that the eminent Turkish civil rights campaigner and publisher Ragip Zarakolu was found guilty of “insulting the institutions of the Turkish Republic”. Just recently the BBC announced that a Turkish court has sentenced a Kurdish politician, the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights 1995 award winner, 47-year-old Ms Leyla Zana, to 10 years in prison. That is what the racist Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code is all about—annihilating dissent and multiculturalism.
It is indeed refreshing to note that all the major Universal Declarations, International Charters and Conventions are not in agreement with the monolithic and rabid nationalism of the past and the present Turkish ruling elite, the like of Erdogan and Gönül, mentioned above. Here are a few of those documents:
* UNITED NATIONS CHARTER 1945
* UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1948
* CONVENION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE 1948
* INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINAION 1965
* INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 1966
* UNIVERSAL DECLERATION OF THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE 1976
* UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE 1984
* THE GENEVA DECLARATION ON TERRORISM 1987
* EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL AND MINORITY LANGUAGES 1992
* INTERNATIONAL COVENENANT ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS 199
* FRAMEWORK CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL MINORITIES 1995
* UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE 2007
On December 2, 2005, in a presentation at the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights, Dr Fatma Müge Göçek candidly admitted the following: “I, as an ethnically Turkish citizen, am not guilty, but am responsible for what happened to the Armenians in 1915. I did an analysis of the Deputies of the first National Assembly, I have found enough documentation that implicates about 25-30% of the Deputies of having participated in the massacres against the Armenians... Not only was there no accountability and no punishment for those who committed crimes against the Armenians, but many of the perpetrators, unfortunately, then became leaders of the Turkish Republic.”
As if emulating Dr F. Müge Göçek’s example, few days ago, on December 5, 2008, correspondent Ayşe Karabat in Ankara signed this note in the journal TODAY’S ZAMAN: ”A group of Turkish intellectuals have apologized for the “great disaster that Ottoman Armenians suffered in 1915” but have fallen short of calling on the state to do the same. A petition initiated by a group of intellectuals, including professors Baskin Oran and Ahmet İnsel, journalists Ali Bayramoğlu and Cengiz Aktar, personally apologizes for the events.” The petition reads: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathise with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologise to them." This is a first step, but a courageous one, especially when taken in the home country.
During the tragic times of 1915, a scientist and one-time minister of Education in Turkey, Ahmed Riza, was appalled by the wide spread usurpation of the Armenian properties. Even though he was a Young Turk activist, but an anticolonialist sympathisor nevertheless, he was adamant that: “the Armenians […] did not abandon their properties voluntarily; they were forcibly, compulsorily removed from their domiciles and exiled. Now the government through its efforts is selling their goods… If we are a constitutional regime functioning in accordance with constitutional law we can’t do this. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties, such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.” (Y. Bayur. Turk Inkilabz. vol. III, part 3 op. cit. in Dadrian. History of the Armenian Genocide)
But the law did allow it and with no regard whatsoever to any human conscience. On September 13, 1915, the Ottoman parliament passed the "Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation". The ‘lawful’ plunder of homes, livestock, land and all was mercilessly unleashed. Months before that draconian Law, the proto-Nazi regime of the Young Turks gave no credance to the Triple Entente, when the latter warned them, on May 2, 1915 that "In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied Governments announce publicly… to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres." (FO 371/2488/51010 (May 28, 1915)
It’s worth noting that the notion “crimes against humanity and civilization”, thus had its first entry in the annals of human history, which still serves as one of the best definitions of Genocide, the latter to be coined nearly three decades later.
Trying to assess the enormity of the Aremnian cultural loss, the Editor in Chief of Documents on British Foreign Policy, Prof W. N. Medlicott, wrote, on September 14, 1974: “Hardly less tragic than the actual destruction of life has been the disruption of an age-long cultural and religious heritage and the loss of an ancestral home tenaciously defended for over 2000 years. It is well that these events should be recorded and that we should pay a tribute to the courage of the survivors of the massacres and their descendants, scattered though they now are throughout the world.”
History has taught us, time and again, that when racist ideology gets hold of politics and the power to oppress, then a ‘chosen’ race becomes the cult, or the ‘divinely’ cultivated one, and all the other races are expected or even forced to be their slaves to cultivate the soil of the world for the cult-race to cherish its ‘divine’ privileges. Characteristically, the human culture itself becomes abhorrent to the ‘divinely cultivated elite’. No wonder an arch racist Dr Goebbels, once confessed: “whenever I hear the word culture I release the safety-catch of my pistol”. The question remains, why the all-powerful Nazi cult leader was terrorised by the mere utterance of the word culture?
What a fantastic metaphorical term, culture, to denote the social, spiritual, intellectual and artistic endeavours of human societies, indeed of humanity as a whole. Culture has no proper antinomy, unlike Civilization, which can be contrasted with Barbarism. The so-called ‘barbaric’ people or societies were also thought to be in possession of culture, albeit ‘less civilized’ ones. The cultivated human beings became closer to being civilized. For many centuries, the meaning of culture was focussed on the concept of a process, as in the act of cultivating the soil of the earth, not only individually, but especially as a society of humans. Civilization, having the ‘city’ as its core, pushed the development of the metaphor to mean not only the process, but also the product of that process. As a result, language, being the most valued commodity of that product, became also the yardstick of civility.
When culture began to be recognised as the end product of a process, civilization was envisaged as the means for that end; in other words, culture signified the values and meanings of that process, while civilization implied its material organisation. It is in that contextual process that culture developed to express the most cherished desire of us all-- freedom, ultimately aspiring for its end product-- happiness. But it is in civilization or Civic Society that the human desire for freedom and happiness can be materialised. A Civic Society therefore essentially implies a non-racist, multi-cultural society-- the building block of multi-cultural civilization.
Here again Raphael Lemkin’s thoughtful contribution is welcome: “I understood that the function of memory is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience […] It became clear to me that the diversity of nations, religious groups and races is essential to civilization because every one of those groups has a mission to fulfill and a contribution to make in terms of culture.”
All the above notwithstanding, UNESCO has been warning the world, for decades now, that the greatest shame of the current civilisation is the fact that thousands of children die of hunger every single day. Today that number has reached the staggering 44,000 hungry children dying each day of the year, as if a Hiroshima bomb is unleashed every single day just to kill children. I would like to pose the following: that the Goebbels’ of this world, “releasing the safety-catch of their pistols”—in modern parlance cluster bombs & co, ill-Ltd --should also be seen responsible for the modern massacres of the innocents. Can there be any doubt that this child cleansing is also the unmentioned genocide of humanity, ongoing and an authentic one at that, which surely is the outcome of our own socio-economic and industrial military system, now coined with cynical panache as Globalisation, whereby tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, each averaging at least 20 times the destructive power of a Hiroshima bomb, are already in deployment all around the world.
Meanwhile billions pour into the pockets of the warmongers of modern metropolises. These warlords of Mammon would eventually thrive in an ‘Inorganic Paradise’—a ‘paradise’ void of universal human rights and sustained by legalised torture; glorification of violence geared towards maximising profit at any cost; xenophobic state terror protected with religious fervour. And, topping as if the macabre orgy, genocide has been already tested, for a century now, to become the collateral damage of its inorganically modernised and sweat-shopped ‘global village’ of hunger and debt.
Sixty years ago this same day of the month, December 9, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. To morrow, December 10, 2008, will be the 60th anniversary of another momentous event—the adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Its good to believe that the two documents will remain as beacons for lucid endeavours such that humanity at large might ‘rage against the dying’ of its dreams and refuse to become cannon fodder for Mammon, Racism and Terror, thus guarding its deeds of tolerance and justice, fair share and good care, compassion and conscience—the true wealth of nations, hence the health of the world.
Yet a crucial question still remains. How many of the 192 UN member states can genuinely welcome these two humanist documents with clear consciousness and not confront it with hypocritical adherences to the lustre of the texts? Nonetheless, the tenacity of those who dared survive the ultimate state terror and all its horrendous manifestations, persisting then to pass on that struggle to the next generation, aspiring to regain full justice, peace and humanity for all, is in itself, I humbly believe, a valiant act of altruism, of stretching out to the denier too that ultimate gift, worthy of all the material riches of the world--Humanism. Therein lies the essence and valour of truth, reparation and reconciliation, surely the happiest way towards welcoming the 60th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide—the Crime against multi-cultural civilization.
Khatchatur I. Pilikian. Sometime university professor of music (USA), Pilikian is a performing musician, painter and a writer. He has studied art and music at the Fine Arts and Music Academies in Rome and Siena. “Leonardo da Vinci on voice, music and stage design” was the title of his research as a Fulbright scholar at I.U. School of Music. In 1976, he designed and directed, at Wayne State University, the public radio WDET-FM series HARC-The Heritage of Armenian Culture. In 1984, he published Refuting Terrorism - Seven Epistles From Diaspora (in English and Armenian). He has contributed the entry Music and Turner in the Oxford University Press encyclopaedic publication titled THE TURNER COMPANION. The Spokesman for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation published his paper for the 2005 European Network for Peace and Human Rights Conference, The Spectre of Genocide as Collateral Damage is Haunting the World. His most recent book is UNESCO Laureates: Nazim Hikmet & Aram Khatchaturian (Garod Books of the Gomidas Institute).
----- Original Message -----From: Eilian WilliamsSent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 5:48 AMSubject: Re: invitationDear Friends
These are two new EDMs in the House of Commons.(177 and 27) Could you please e-mail your MP (and other MPs if possible) asking them to sign them? You may find this tiring but it is the only avenue open to us at the moment to pressurise the government. There is a small mistake in the first one . It should have read "Lemkin was inspired " not "orgainiser Lemkin is inspired " of course, but this does not alter the thrust of the motion
Regards
Eilian
EDM 177UN GENOCIDE CONVENTION 60TH ANNIVERSARY08.12.2008
Spink, BobThat this House notes that on 9 December, meetings in the House on the continuing persecution of minorities will mark the 60th anniversary of the UN Genocide Convention; further notes that organiser Raphael Lemkin is inspired by the genocide of Armenians and Assyrians in 1915, the subsequent massacre of Assyrians at the birth of modern Iraq, and his personal experience following the invasion of Poland; further notes that the Government has never consulted any reliable genocide scholars; and urges the Government to honour Raphael Lemkin's work by changing its untenable position of denial of the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
Signatures( 13)
EDM 27SAFETY OF MINORITY COMMUNITIES IN IRAQ03.12.2008
Spink, BobThat this House is concerned that the failure to honour promises made after the First World War to the Assyrians and Kurdish minority communities on autonomy, the creation of a centralised Iraq in 1932 without provision for the security of minorities, the recent war of 2003 which led to the rise of fundamentalism, and the ethnic cleansing of the Mandaeans and Assyrian-Chaldeo-Syriacs in Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, place a special responsibility on the Government to these minorities; calls on the Government to therefore take a sympathetic attitude to asylum claims from these minorities; and urges the Government to learn from past mistakes and to use its influence in a robust way on the government of Iraq to ensure the safety of the aforementioned minorities as well as of Yezidis, Faili Kurds and Shabaks, so that a dishonourable withdrawal from Iraq is avoided.
Signatures( 21)----- Original Message -----From: Eilian WilliamsSent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 11:46 AMSubject: invitationWales-Armenia Solidarity Appeal to Help the Armenians of IraqDear FriendToday we launch a world-wide appeal to give financial and other help to the Armenians of Mosul and Baghdad who have had to flee for their lives (this last week following the killing of 15 Christians in Mosul and previously) . This follows my visit to the Armenian community of Havrest and Zeikho on Friday of last week and the Chaldean Church in Dohuk on Saturday.On Thursday, I had visited the Municipality of Ankawa, an entirely Christian town just outside Erebil. It was there that the Head of the Municipality informed me of what had happened to Christians in Mosul the previous week. I met the KRG Foreign Minister and thanked him for the assistance given to fleeing Christians of the Arab-controlled Mosul city, and asked him to ensure their protection .On Friday, in Zako, Father Miran Yousif Murad showed me around the Armenian Church, built in 1923 by Genocide Survivors and introduced me to several who had previously fled to Zakho from Mosul. He agreed to accept any money collected in Europe and America to help the local refugees from Mosul and from Baghdad.He took me to a village called Havrest, built for the Armenians by the Kurdish Regional Government. With me was Jwan Taher Ahmed a journalist who represents the Dohuk Governate. About 60 local people came to meet us and we sat outside the school. When I asked what are the main problems, their spokesman replied that they are helping the refugees arriving this week by sharing them around people's homes. The refugees receive nothing, only the help of themselves for several weeks or months. Later they are given about 40 dollars per month by the Kurdish government, as well as enough diesel to run generators to provide electricity for 3 hours per dayFinancial help for the new refugees would be most welcome, as well as help for two other problems. There are presently 9 children who need to travel to the High School in Dohuk. They would like 12,000 dollars to buy a van to carry them to school. I was impressed by their willingness to help others even though their own situation was not flourishing. Surely throughout the world we can raise12, 000 dollars for the vehicle, and some more to help the newly arrived refugees? When I asked them do you receive help from Europe or America they said that they had no contacts there.I was afterwards taken to the home of a family who showed us her two-year old daughter (more details, names etc will follow about them) She has two holes in her heart and when they lived in Baghdad, a German doctor was going to take her to Germany with a humanitarian organisation to have the required heart operation. Unfortunately the doctor fled Baghdad because of the terrorism and then they also fled, loosing the chance of this operation.Can anyone please help by persuading the US, UK , French or Armenian government to provide a 6 month visa for the mother and daughter? Does anyone know of Humanitarian organisations who could help them? Can you put us in touch with every Armenian heart specialist that you know of? Father Miran will provide more details very soon.On Saturday in Dohuk,I was taken by translator Kamal Hussain Mawlood to met the members of the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Assembly, including Jameel Zaito, the chairman.They include all but one of the Christian political parties, and they confirmed the truth of the news of killings and flight of Christians from Mosul. I met a brave lady, Ms Basima Issa Salman, a Christian Member on the Niniveh Council, who had been threatened with assassination 13 times. She gave me copies of the letters which had been posted into the houses of Christians, ordering them to leave, and threatening to kill them in the name of Islam.In the Dohuk Chaldean Catholic Church, over 60 people were given shelter. They came into a church room to recount their experiences.Professor Samir Rahim began.. "The 6th of October passed quietly but on the 7th what hit us was like a volcano or a flood. Terrorists asked the people for their IDs and if they were found to be Christian they were killed. Assassinations had began on the streets. Two were ordinary building workers. A group of terrorists came and killed them . One of the victims was named Amjad. Assassinations were sporadic to start with and grew more intense . By Thursday the 9th, 14 had been killed. They attacked three families, kicked them out of their homes, stole their belongings and blasted their houses. In one house they came through the roof and slaughtered the whole family.People were now living in panic and terror. The terrorists said "We do not want Christians living amongst us. If you stay here we are going to kill you" The municipality for 10 days was as if it did not exist. On the 8th we fled for our lives to Kurdistan. The events happened in front of the local police with the assistance of the by police. The army did not interfere with the situation for 10 days. A total of over 2,000 families have fled. "Ablahad Khoshaba Zaiya, a floor tile layer showed me where they were sleeping in the Church and said "I know nothing about my future . All I know is that now I live in the house of God We have no future at all here. I just want a safe place to raise my children". .There were 7 in his family .Gorgis Shamon Esho , Haitha Petros and Faleel Eskandar Istefo agreed with him.An Armenian woman Mariam Sepan Sarkismeherian said that her family was originally from Dehe in Armenia, and had fled to Mosul after the 1915 genocide.Only her father survived from his whole family. They all said that they were too afraid to go back to Mosul. Even if things improve, the terrorists will always come back, because they want the "Christian infidels" to leave. Many of the people said that they would be willing to go to Europe if they were accepted.I ask you to e-mail eilian@nantperis.wanadoo.co.uk if you can help in a financial or other way.Details of the Wales-Armenia Solidarity bank account are as follows:Direct transfers could be madeHSBC Bank plcSort Code : 40-16-02Account Number: 11578922Account Name: BRAWDGARWCH CYMRU-ARMENIAWALES-ARMENIA SOLIDARITYAccount Number for international transfers : GB64MIDL40160211568922For anyone sending cheques the address isEilian WilliamsWales-Armenia Solidarity7 Nant Ffynnon,Nant Peris,Gwynedd,Wales,LL55 4UGUnited KingdomCheques should be made out to Wales Armenia Solidarity. I will send all the money to father Miran. He will provide details of what vehicle is bought and will also give details of a spokesman for the village of Havrest.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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