Armenian Genocide: A Lesson to Be Learned
Apr 19, 2007
Valley Sun
By Geghard Arakelian
Every year some light is shed on the atrocities that took place from 1915 to 1917 in Armenia; what follows is community support, genocidal awareness and bigotry.
To start off, the Armenian Genocide was executed by what was known as the Young Turk Government. This government viewed the Armenian population that lived in the Ottoman Empire as second class citizens.
Through deceit and with extreme prejudice death squads were sent out to round up Armenians and murder them mercilessly. It is estimated that more than one million Armenian men, women and children died due to this process.
Expansionism and ethnocentrism are two of the most cited reasons these actions were carried out by the Turks.
Unfortunately there are people who grow tiresome and even irate by the coming and going of the protests and information offered on either TV or in the schools of the Glendale Unified School District every April 24, the date in 1915 when the attrocities began.
But why should anyone feel annoyed or angered when it comes to remembering those who died unreasonable and unjust deaths so long ago? The answer is actually very simple: there are bigots among us.
When I was attending Crescenta Valley High School an acquaintance of mine at school explained to me that he was upset about the observance of April 24. When asked why, he said all Armenians deserved to die because there is no proof of what the Turks did and that Armenians are normally liars.
Two years later a math teacher turned off the classroom TV as soon as a slideshow of the genocide was played following the televised bulletin. He claimed that every year the same information was, "shoved down his throat" and that remembrance needs to be given to countries that have experienced greater mass exterminations. A few classmates even backed him.
The Armenian Genocide should be remembered as much as possible. Those who believe that the Turkish government should take responsibility for the crimes of the past have no intentions of taking spotlights off people of other ethnic backgrounds.
Mass killings aren't like "American Idol," they're definitely not popularity contests and the killings are not tallied from cell phone texts.
Those skeptical about what happened tend to argue that Armenians weren't the only ones that were at one point dealt a brutal hand. After all, there are the causalities of all the wars in history and every country on this planet has lived through some dark days.
But one cannot take the Armenian Genocide and throw into a general pile of genocides without a label. The genocide of 1915 was an evil crime against man and not simply against Armenians.
But the cultural and ethnic tag of any massacre can tell us where, when, how and why it happened.
Imagine if people professed that the Holocaust should not be recognized — that all Jews should shut their mouths because people are force fed the same information and have seen Schindler's List a dozen times. What then? Do we go about forgetting why Hitler provoked a war of aggression?
No one is asking people to stop their day for what happened in 1915, those who are raising awareness are only asking that people take a small fraction of effort to remember what happened so that it may never happen again.
Hitler once asked, "Who after all will remember the Armenian Genocide?" I've answered this question many times before and in the same fashion: certainly not those who don't want it remembered.
This April 24 egos, prejudice and apathy have to be put aside. Don't think of it as a day that Armenians want to start a ruckus. Think of it as a day to remember those who died and the reasons for why they were killed.
Why should people learn how the wrong came about? Simple intuition leads me to believe it will teach people how to prevent the same wrong from happening again.
If the reader is still uncertain of all the above then answer this question: If you and your family were about to be brutally murdered for an unjust reason, wouldn't you want your last cries to be remembered for generations on end?
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Born in Iran, Arakelian has been a Glendale resident since childhood. A former staff writer for the Valley Sun, he attends Cal State Northridge where he is studying for a degree in journalism.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Valley Sun
By Geghard Arakelian
Every year some light is shed on the atrocities that took place from 1915 to 1917 in Armenia; what follows is community support, genocidal awareness and bigotry.
To start off, the Armenian Genocide was executed by what was known as the Young Turk Government. This government viewed the Armenian population that lived in the Ottoman Empire as second class citizens.
Through deceit and with extreme prejudice death squads were sent out to round up Armenians and murder them mercilessly. It is estimated that more than one million Armenian men, women and children died due to this process.
Expansionism and ethnocentrism are two of the most cited reasons these actions were carried out by the Turks.
Unfortunately there are people who grow tiresome and even irate by the coming and going of the protests and information offered on either TV or in the schools of the Glendale Unified School District every April 24, the date in 1915 when the attrocities began.
But why should anyone feel annoyed or angered when it comes to remembering those who died unreasonable and unjust deaths so long ago? The answer is actually very simple: there are bigots among us.
When I was attending Crescenta Valley High School an acquaintance of mine at school explained to me that he was upset about the observance of April 24. When asked why, he said all Armenians deserved to die because there is no proof of what the Turks did and that Armenians are normally liars.
Two years later a math teacher turned off the classroom TV as soon as a slideshow of the genocide was played following the televised bulletin. He claimed that every year the same information was, "shoved down his throat" and that remembrance needs to be given to countries that have experienced greater mass exterminations. A few classmates even backed him.
The Armenian Genocide should be remembered as much as possible. Those who believe that the Turkish government should take responsibility for the crimes of the past have no intentions of taking spotlights off people of other ethnic backgrounds.
Mass killings aren't like "American Idol," they're definitely not popularity contests and the killings are not tallied from cell phone texts.
Those skeptical about what happened tend to argue that Armenians weren't the only ones that were at one point dealt a brutal hand. After all, there are the causalities of all the wars in history and every country on this planet has lived through some dark days.
But one cannot take the Armenian Genocide and throw into a general pile of genocides without a label. The genocide of 1915 was an evil crime against man and not simply against Armenians.
But the cultural and ethnic tag of any massacre can tell us where, when, how and why it happened.
Imagine if people professed that the Holocaust should not be recognized — that all Jews should shut their mouths because people are force fed the same information and have seen Schindler's List a dozen times. What then? Do we go about forgetting why Hitler provoked a war of aggression?
No one is asking people to stop their day for what happened in 1915, those who are raising awareness are only asking that people take a small fraction of effort to remember what happened so that it may never happen again.
Hitler once asked, "Who after all will remember the Armenian Genocide?" I've answered this question many times before and in the same fashion: certainly not those who don't want it remembered.
This April 24 egos, prejudice and apathy have to be put aside. Don't think of it as a day that Armenians want to start a ruckus. Think of it as a day to remember those who died and the reasons for why they were killed.
Why should people learn how the wrong came about? Simple intuition leads me to believe it will teach people how to prevent the same wrong from happening again.
If the reader is still uncertain of all the above then answer this question: If you and your family were about to be brutally murdered for an unjust reason, wouldn't you want your last cries to be remembered for generations on end?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born in Iran, Arakelian has been a Glendale resident since childhood. A former staff writer for the Valley Sun, he attends Cal State Northridge where he is studying for a degree in journalism.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Labels: Armenian Genocide Remembrance
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