THE MURDER OF A NATION - ARMENOCIDE
Posted by: Rahm
Dear Mrs. Christian Amanpour
The documentary entitled "Scream Bloody Murder" anchored by Christian Amanpour on CNN was courageous in some respect, troubling in other respect and disappointing generally; it did not penetrate the core of the subject, it lacked the serious analysis of the events and above all it almost ignored the most important Genocide of them all, the Armenian Genocide, perpetrated in Turkey, beginning from 1915, by the Turkish government with the direct participation of a large section of the Turkish and Kurdish populations.
A- Amanpour's attempt was courageous but stopped far short from the truth; because, since 1923 Turkey officially started to deny the Genocide (the allied occupying forces in Turkey having left the country) and begun to use all its available material and moral resources to pressure, bribe and lobby all countries and individuals who tried to remind the world of the Armenian Genocide. This on-going lobbying activity, which continues to the present day, became much more aggressive and efficient when after the Jewish Genocide and the creation of Israel, the Israeli powerful lobby, not a secret to anyone, joined-in forces. Under those pressures, Amanpour could not have given to the Armenian Genocide the prominent place it deserves, instead she gave the least important place by mentioning it for about 45 seconds in a 90-minute press screener and did not dwell into it in the same depth and compelling way as for the other Genocides and reported with deliberate inaccuracies; she did an injustice to the victims and denigrated their memories; thus, by giving in to those pressures, Amanpour lost her reputation of the objective investigative journalist; her cover up of the truth was brought to light and she is no longer the journalist of the truth that she pretends to be. However, she can redeem herself if very soon she apologizes to the Armenian nation and to all those who know the truth and she prepares a special documentary on the Armenian genocide based on materials from non denialist sources.
B- Amanpour's documentary was troubling because she belittled the Armenian genocide; the following points demonstrate why this genocide is the most important:
1) The Turkish assault in 1915, under cover of world war I, was so organized, swift and brutal that it obliterated in six-month time the Armenian nation and culture from its ancestral homeland of three thousands year (long before the Turks came from central Asia and occupied Armenia in 1453). For the first time in the history of mankind a devastating crime against humanity of such magnitude was being committed, the eye witness of the day, the US Ambassador in Turkey, Henry Morgenthau noted in a compelling way in his book "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" as follows: "My only reason for relating such dreadful things as this is that, without the details, the English-speaking public cannot understand precisely what this nation is which we call Turkey. I have by no means told the most terrible details, for a complete narration of the sadistic orgies of which these Armenian men and women were the victims can never be printed in an American publication. Whatever crimes the most pervert instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915. .... Yet all these previous persecutions seem almost trivial when we compare them with the sufferings of the Armenians,"... With the above vivid characterization of the crime it is not a surprise that the Armenians called the atrocities "Apocalypse", Yeghern in Armenian
2)" The Murder of a Nation", for the first time in human history these words were
used by the US Ambassador in Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, as the title for chapter
24 of his book, to define the crime; subsequently, in 1948 Raphael Lemkin did not
have to invent the word, all he had to do is translate it into Greek and Latin
"Genocide", thus the words to describe the horrific crime were first coined in 1917
to describe the first large scale destruction of a race in mankind history, the
Murder of the Armenian Nation.
2) For the first time in human history the words "crimes against humanity" were pronounced by the Allied governments, in a May 24, 1915 declaration to warn Turkey that they will be held responsible for their crimes, once the war would be over.
3) For the first time in modern times, since the Spanish Inquisition, the word "Holocaust" was used to describe the first large scale "Murder of a Nation" against the Armenians of Sassoun, in eastern Turkey in 1895-96 (200,000 victims); the second large scale "Murder of a Nation" took place against the Armenians of Adana in 1909 ( 20,000 victims) which was followed in 1915 by the largest of all (2,000 000 victims). In all these 3 "Murders of a Nation"
thousands of helpless old people, women and children were locked in wooden buildings and churches and burned to death, the true Holocaust, as opposed to burning already dead bodies which does not meet the definition of Holocaust (destruction by fire).
4) War crimes tribunal: At the end of World War I, Turkey having lost the war by
the side of Germany, impoverished and down on their knees, was occupied by the
Allied Forces; by fear of dismemberment of the country, the provisional Turkish
government, established in 1919 a military tribunal in Constantinople to try the
government officials or individuals responsible for the massacres. Close to 10,000
people were imprisoned and all top officials, who had fled the country were
sentenced to death in absentia, only one person was hanged; as time went by, the
Allied Powers gradually lost interest and tried to struck separate deals with Turkey,
especially that the Armenian side having suffered a devastating blow was
practically non-existent; and in 1923 by the time Kemal Ataturk came to power
having actively continued the massacres in the Caucasus, in Adana and Smyrna,
the Allied forces ceased the occupation and the government of Kemal Ataturk
the father of "Modern Turkey" started to deny the Genocide. Thus a golden
opportunity was lost by the Western "civilized" world to punish, for the first time
in history, crimes against humanity. This cowardly attitude by the Allies
opened the way to the subsequent Genocides. The swiftness and efficiency of the
Nuremberg Tribunal (a replica of the Constantinople Tribunal 26 years earlier),
at the end of WW II was the direct result of the failures in1919.
5) Turkey continues the Armenian Genocide to this day:
By Illegal Territorial blockading, the newly independent already landlocked,
republic of Armenia, together with its ally Azerbaijan.
By systematically destroying the thousands historic Armenian monuments.
- By eliminating the word Armenicus from the scientific names of the flora and
Fauna.
By not allowing the small Armenian community to maintain their churches
so that eventually they become inhabitable and are ordered to shut down.
By not allowing the ordaining of new priests and monks so that religion is
eventually shut Down.
By forbidding the descendents of forcefully turkified Armenians to speak up by
telling their stories, refer to "My Grandmother" by Fethiye Cetin.
By prosecuting those who speak or write about the Armenian Genocide
under Article 301 of the penal code, by bringing charges for "insulting
Turkishness".
By hiring academics in western democracies to rewrite distorted history about
the Armenian Genocide.
By hiring lobbyists and spending millions of dollars every month to block the
passage of resolution 106 that recognizes the Armenian Genocide in US
Congress and Senate and to derail any military or economic deal between the US
and Armenia.
6) The deniers of the Armenian Genocide:
After 93 years, Turkey the perpetrator, still denies the crime, but the majority
of Western democracies have acknowledged the Arrmenian Genocide. The
important countries who still deny, and have joined Turkey, are the U.S., Israel
and the U.K ( the axis of evil) are the principal reason for Turkey's denial; those
3 countries who never miss the occasion to portray themselves as "civilized" and
advanced "democracies" are tarnishing their images in the world and are sending
the wrong message to the world by encouraging the countries with appetite for
genocide like Turkey to continue unchecked to commit Genocides against the
Armenians (as outlined above), the Kurds in Turkey (worse than the Genocide
committed by Saddam Hussein against the Iraqi Kurds) and against
the Cypriots, where Turkey is still illegally occupying almost half of the
Island since1974, having abducted more than 10,000 Cypriots during the
invasion, who are still reported as missing. With so much crimes on the watch of
the U.S. the "Super Power" we are led to believe that the U.S. is either accepting
to be an immoral country or is a "Super Puppet" yielding to foreign countries'
lobbies.
C- Amanpour's documentary was disappointing:
Since Amanpour did not mention any of the above indispensible facts, as a minimum prerequisite to comprehend the Armenian Genocide, and which demonstrate the classic nature of this genocide encompassing all facets of the crime more than any other Genocide, thus making it a text-book case, to which everyone should refer for research on the subject of Genocide and human rights, we can conclude that:
1) Either she is incapable of reporting the subjects with an in-depth analysis.
2) Or she is ignorant and not well read.
3) Or she has fallen victim to the pressures of the lobbying forces, as mentioned above, and she compromised with the lobbyist, by mentioning only superficially the Armenian Genocide, to just avoid jeopardizing her job within CNN as the Senior International Correspondent.
D- Epilog:
Which of the above 3 categories she may fall in, Amanpour owes a detailed explanation, to the well informed as well as to the ignorant viewers, for her superficial documentary.
Sincerely.
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