armenian genocide

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Their existence must be terminated

Submitted by antarchi on October 11, 2007 - 23:24

On 15 September 1915... Talaat Pasha, the Turkish Interior minister, cabled an instruction to his prefect in Aleppo about what he should do with the tens of thousands of Armenians in his city. "You have already been informed that the government... has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons living in Turkey... Their existence must be terminated, however tragic the measures taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to any scruples of conscience."

— Robert Fisk

in A reign of terror which history has chosen to neglect, October 2007

Hrant Dink's murder

Submitted by antarchi on January 22, 2007 - 11:18

It would be a fitting memorial to a fellow journalist that the BBC carry out some research on the likelihood or not of the Armenian genocide actually having taken place. They continue to refer to the Armenian "genocide". A genocide is a "genocide", apparently, when not all countries agree that it is a genocide (or a "genocide"?). This is what they say in their Q and A on the Armenian "genocide":

Why put "genocide" in inverted commas?

…Some countries have declared that a genocide took place, but others have resisted calls to do so.'

Which countries, I wonder?

I also can't help wondering whether, in the extremely unlikely event of a British Prime Minister recognizing that the Armenian population was targeted in a systematic and brutal fashion consistent with a policy of genocide, the fact that certain other countries dissented might become less important.

Incidentally - some countries have even resisted calls to declare that the Jewish holocaust took place. But I notice that is not enough reason for it to be referred to as a "holocaust".

How fortunate for BBC journalists that most of them are not brave men or women trying to tell an alternative version of events in difficult circumstances. How tragic for such honest and selfless journalists as Hrant Dink or Anna Politkovskaya who made very similar claims about a different minority, that they cannot expect other journalists to take up and publicise their stories to the world – even, it seems, after their death.

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