The roots of this struggle lie in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire in the midst of World War I.  The rulers of this Turkish Empire, the Young Turk Party, set in motion a plan to, once and for all, rid their borders of their largest minority, the ancient Christian Armenian population of more than two  million spread across the Anatolian landmass.  In systematic fashion the Empire’s armed forces killed over a million subjects, starting with intellectuals and able-bodied men, and then marched the rest to near certain death in the Syrian desert, resulting in the near annihilation of an entire people and the exile of a nation from its home of more than 3,000 years.  These atrocities were widely reported at the time and are today one of the world’s most thoroughly documented mass murders.

To this day, against all evidence and in defiance of even the most basic human standards of morality, the Republic of Turkey denies this crime. They have also mastered Orwellian Newspeak by convincing generation after generation of Turkish citizens that the genocide never occurred.

They spend millions of dollars each year, hiring expensive lobbying firms, creating university chairs that sponsor genocide deniers, buying into foreign policy think tanks here in the U.S. and around the world while at the same time threatening to close U.S. bases in Turkey, block access to our troops in Iraq, threaten trade, or retaliate against Armenia with blockades and economic pressure. They think that by erasing a word, genocide, they will somehow escape responsibility for the wholesale death and suffering, theft and dispossession they have caused. Turkey can no more evade either the verdict of history or the requirements of justice by imposing a gag-rule on the word genocide, any more than a killer can escape punishment by insisting the word murder does not exist.

I’m personally very familiar with the word genocide.  All 4 of my grandparents were survivors. In the case of my grandfather, Stepan Haytayan (whose life story is told in the documentary “Screamers”), Turkish soldiers came to his village, took away his father and all the Armenian men never to be seen again.  This was a standard practice by Turkish soldiers, who typically rounded up the men to take them off to “labor camps” where they were to be executed, leaving the women and children unprotected and subject to forced marches, described by Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador at the time, as a “death warrant to a whole race.”

The similarity between the treatment of the Armenians and the genocide today in Darfur was pointed out last year by Barack Obama, who noted that, “tragically, we are witnessing in Sudan many of the same brutal tactics - displacement, starvation, and mass slaughter - that were used by the Ottoman authorities against defenseless Armenians back in 1915.”  It’s no coincidence that Turkey is one of only a handful of nations, along with China, that still sells arms to the genocidal Sudanese regime, or that Ankara is trying to shield its leader, Omar al-Bashir, from an International Criminal Court arrest warrant.

Even before international lawyer Raphael Lemkin, a Pole of Jewish heritage, coined the term genocide, it was clear to the world that a systematic plan of race extermination had been executed by the Ottoman Turks.  Lemkin’s motivation in inventing this term and leading the charge for the Genocide Convention was, in great measure, his study of the Armenian Genocide, which he, with great foresight, saw as the blueprint for the coming destruction of Europe’s Jews by Hitler and the brutal machinery of the Nazi German state.

For many years, Turkey has leveraged its NATO membership, its former Cold War role, its lobbying power, and military-industrial alliances to buy, bully, or threaten other nations into silence on the Armenian Genocide.  Far too many countries, the U.S. included, have been held hostage to Turkey’s warnings of retribution, but more and more are standing up to this intimidation.  Among these are Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Russia and a growing list that includes 12 NATO allies.  Here in the U.S., 41 states have recognized the Armenian Genocide.

Today, as we approach April 24th, the global day of remembrance of the Armenian Genocide, we look to both the President and Congress to stand up for what’s right; to speak against the Armenian Genocide and all genocides at the level of American values, and to never again allow the United States to be dragged down to the level of Turkey’s threats.

This April, Turkey will again try to block both the White House and Congress from condemning and commemorating this crime, giving itself a vote that it does not deserve in our American democracy.  A foreign government, particularly one that so violently suppresses free speech by its own citizens, should never be allowed to dictate U.S. human rights or genocide prevention policy.

We have, sadly, not learned our lesson.  Here we are, nine decades after the Armenian Genocide and fully six years into the Darfur Genocide, and the international community has yet to forge a durable, effective response to genocide.  Global leaders have proven themselves unwilling to intervene effectively to stop the ongoing slaughter in Sudan, and they’ve been unable to summon the courage to end Turkey’s denials.  Why?  Because, genocide remains a political issue, bartered like a commodity by the great powers, and not a moral imperative that all nations and all peoples must, at all costs, act to prevent.

President Obama is the best-positioned American president in generations to bring about real change to how America and the international community confront mass inhumanity, and our best hope to bring the peoples of the world together to end the cycle of genocide.  He has said that, “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides.”  He’s right.  That’s the moral leader America and the world need and deserve.  In the coming days he has the chance to be just that man.

For more on Serj Tankian’s campaign to urge President Obama to affirm his pledge and officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, please watch:

The L.A. Forum is a huge arena venue for sports and concerts in Inglewood, CA. Several years back, new owners of the venue hired powerful management corporation SMG to run the venue. SMG pushed deep, deep cuts in the salaries of the stagehands and janitors of the facility, and when these workers sought a new, fairer contract, they were fired. Over 120 workers continue to fight to get their jobs back, at a decent wage.

This video was taken back in March of 2008, and features Serj Tankian interviewing members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union (IASTE) Local 33, out picketing the Forum. They explain the beginnings of their campaign, and what people like you can do to help.

For more information, you can visit the Justice at the Forum website. You can also get information on how to contact the venue owners, or help spread the word about the struggle here.

I met Hrant Dink at the L.A. premiere of “Screamers”, the documentary by Carla Garapedian featuring System Of A Down. Hrant is interviewed by Carla in the film where he explains how the “deep state” in Turkey is utilizing an outdated penal code, Article 301 to try him, Orhan Pamuk, and other journalists, writers, and human rights activists for “insulting or offending Turkishness.”

In his newspaper Agos, Hrant discussed issues important to the Armenians of Turkey. He was quite careful not to insult anyone in Turkey present or past regarding the Armenian Genocide or any other “sticky issues” that may be taken negatively. He instead tried to truly understand why so many people in Turkey were in denial of their past, why it was important to have a “real democracy” there where everyone can speak freely without worrying about retributions. He was by no means a fanatic nor extremist, but was a humble, kind, yet truthful individual who cared about Turkey, his country, and being Armenian, his culture and heritage.

He yearned to bridge the understanding between Armenians and Turks to get over the pains of the past stemming from the Armenian Genocide by the Ottomans in 1915. The difference between Hrant Dink and Orhan Pamuk and other writers or journalists incriminated under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code was that Hrant Dink was of Armenian descent and therefore may have been viewed more so as a traitor than other Turks of Turkish descent.

After many attempts at appealing the 3 different cases brought against him in reference to Article 301, Hrant was ready to take his case of freedom of speech to the European Court of Human Rights. In the last article he wrote for Agos on Jan. 10th, he made it very clear that the overwhelming amount of death threats against him were psychologically punishing him for speaking out. He felt his life was in extreme danger and asked for help from security officials of the country, but was not given any. When friends encouraged him to leave Turkey to avoid danger, he said that if he left now, he would be betraying the fight for democracy in Turkey, and that wouldn’t be fair to others in his situation. I am not that heroic, I would have left. And funny enough when we met, he mused with me, calling me heroic, the whole time while I looked into his gentle eyes and knew in my heart that he was the true hero. It’s easy for me to speak out against things, because at worst, I’ll be faced with brutal disagreement, where he was faced with prison terms, harassment, psychological torture, and now death.

So he was killed, brutally, in daylight, with bullets to the head, another beautiful soul silenced no more.

Hrant Dink’s cases along with Orhan Pamuk’s past case and many others facing incrimination in Turkey under Article 301 of the penal code encouraged me to work with Amnesty International in getting the word out and working on trying to reverse this unjust incrimination of the freedoms of speech there.

Preface: Two days after the attacks on September 11, 2001, Serj Tankian posted an essay on System of a Down’s official website, which seemed controversial at the time. It was promptly taken down by Sony, the band’s record label. Sony’s opinion was that Tankian had tried to justify the terrorist attacks and that his claims were unfounded. Others have noted that Tankian’s essay, which called the 9/11 attacks “brutal”, explicitly stated that the need to understand the motivations of terrorists “does not mean that we should not find the guilty party(s)..and..try them [in court]” words cited to suggest “it is impossible to say that Serj tried to justify the 9/11 attacks” in his essay, which “advocated peace and the research and development of alternate fuels”.

The brutal attacks/bombings this week in New York, and Washington D.C., along with threats of attacks there and elsewhere in the country have changed our times forever. While the mass media concentrates on the details of the destruction, and the blanketed words of politicians, I will attempt to understand and explain the events from the fence. BOMBING AND BEING BOMBED ARE THE SAME THINGS ON DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE FENCE.

Terror is not a spontaneous human action without credence. People just dont hijack planes and commit harikari (suicide) without any weight of thought to the action. No one in the media seems to ask WHY DID THESE PEOPLE DO THIS HORRIFIC ACT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION?

To be able to understand the answer to this, we must first look at our U.S. Mideast Policy. During most of the 20th century, U.S. businesses have worked on attaining oil rights and concessions from countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. After WWI, secret back door deals by our State Dept. yielded oil rights from then defeated Turkey to fields in what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in return for looking the other way at a crime against humanity, the Genocide of the Armenians by the Turks. Oil profits have been the motivating factors behind many attempts at counterinsurgency of democratic regimes by the CIA and the U.S in the Middle East (such as Iran in the 1950s, where the Shah replaced the Prime Minister who refused to give up oil rights to the U.S., and since the people couldnt deal with the Shah, an extremist government headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini ultimately prevailed). During the Iran-Iraq war, America supplied both sides with weapons and advice. These are not the actions of a rich superpower wanting peace. Lets not forget that Saddam Hussein, before being Americas vision of the Anti-Christ, was a close ally of the U.S., and the CIA. So what was the firm belief system of consecutive American administrations that caused all this to occur ? PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST WILL LEAD TO HIGHER OIL AND GASOLINE PRICES. Lets not also forget the power of the Arms industry, disguised as defense, that still sells billions of dollars of weapons to the area. Therefore it has not been in the short-term economic interest of the U.S. to foster Peace in the Middle East. Using the above reasoning, the U.S. has encouraged extremist governments, toppled democracies, as in the case of Iran to replace it with a monarchy, rigged elections, and many more unspeakable political crimes for U.S. businesses abroad. Lets not also forget the Red Scare. During the war between the then Soviet Union and Afghanistan, the U.S. armed and supported the Taliban, a fundamentalist Muslim organization, and allowed them to export opium and heroin out of their country to pay for those weapons. Therefore the Taliban rose to power and control with the help of the U.S.A. Today, the bombing of Iraq still continues, no longer covered by the media, the economic embargo still remains, killing millions of children, and recently, while the world and the U.N. General Assembly have cried out to bring in peacekeeping forces into Israel and Palestine, to end the escalated war and recent assassinations, the U.S. has vetoed the rest of the Security Council and has halted the possibility of peace, there, in the most volatile place in the world.

People in Serbia, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan to name a few have seen bombs fall, not always at military targets and kill innocent civilians, as the scene in New York city yesterday. The wars waged by our government in our names has landed smack in the middle of our living room. The half hour of destruction closed down all world financial markets, struck the central headquarters of our military, and had our leaders running into bunkers, and our citizens into fear and frenzy. What scares me more than what has occurred is what our reactions to the occurrences may cause. President Bush belongs to a long generation of Republican Presidents who love war economies. The media has only concentrated on the bombings, if you will, and what type of retaliations are looming for the perpetrators. What everyone fails to realize is that the bombings are a reaction to existing injustices around the world, generally unseen to most Americans. To react to a reaction would be to further sponsor the reaction. In other words, my belief is that the terror will multiply if concrete steps are not taken to sponsor peace in the middle east, NOW. This does not mean that we should not find the guilty party(s), Bin Laden, or whoever they may be, and not try them. Put simply, as long as a major injustice remains, violence precipitates to the surface of life.

Native American folklore, the Bible, Nostradamus, and many other major religious beliefs point to this era with the visuals of yesterdays disasters, and conditions of ecological disasters we experience daily in our lives today. War, rumors of war, famine, long burning fires, etc., are at our doorstep. We can prevail over this possible vision with the power of the human spirit, understanding, compassion, and peace. ITS TIME TO PUT OUR NEEDS FOR SECURITY AND SURVIVAL, ACHIEVED ONLY THROUGH PEACE, ABOVE AND BEYOND PROFITS, ESPECIALLY IN THESE TIMES.

SOLUTION:

The U.S. should stop sidestepping the U.N. Security Council, and allow U.N. Peacekeeping troops and missions to the Middle East. Stop the violence first.

Stop the bombing and patrol of Iraq.

With todays gains in the use of alternative fuels, develop them to full usage with autos and other utilities, to make the country less dependant on an already depleting natural reserve, oil.

By initiating peace, we would have already shaken the foundations of support for Bin Laden, and/or all those that sponsor activities like those we saw yesterday, and break the stronghold of extremists on the world of Islam. On the other hand, if we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, wed be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation. As shown from yesterdays events, you cannot stop a person who is ready to die.

Source: www.armeniapedia.org