Action: Armenian Genocide Resolution

Hi, everyone

Some of you know I haven't been feeling well, and thus the explanation as to why I've taken such a long blog hiatus. But surely, you thought, it will only be a matter of time before something happens to make Anoosh mad, and then we'll get a blog action.

You know me so well.

On Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27 to 21 in favor of H. RES. 106, which would recognize the 1915 massacres of approximately 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The resolution is now set to go to the full House for a vote.

Armenian Americans have been waiting for this moment for ... well, for as long as the survivors have lived in the U.S. If the United States officially acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, this would be an enormous step toward global legitimacy and would put further pressure on Turkey to face this terrible crime in its past. Turkey currently silences those who speak about the Genocide and has prosecuted them under Article 301, which imposes fines and imprisonment for "insulting Turkishness."

Turkey has threatened to withdraw its support for our War on Terror should the resolution pass. This threat has proved remarkably effective in the past. With Turkey a key ally to the U.S. and its strategic position between Europe and the Middle East, there is simply no good time to pass this resolution. (Unless Europe gets into the game, with E.U. membership as the carrot.)

But it must pass, if for no other reason than for my 93-year-old grandmother and the few other Genocide survivors who have hung on to life in hopes that their adopted country and home might finally stand up for them and acknowledge the truth.

Please call your House reps and tell them to support H. RES. 106, the "Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution." See Project VoteSmart at right to find your reps' contact information.

In related news, I was shocked and dismayed that the progressive standard of reporting, The Nation, ran this horrible column on the House Foreign Affairs Committee vote.

I have copied the web letter I wrote on this column below, and you can see my and other—mostly irate—reader responses here.

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I don't understand Nicholas von Hoffman's hostility toward the House Foreign Affairs Committee resolution. Didn't someone once say, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"? Does von Hoffman disagree with this statement, or does he believe it is subject to a statute of limitations? Does he next propose to pooh-pooh the furor over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's characterization of the Holocaust as "under scholarly debate"? C'mon, Jews, it's in the past, get over it.

Armenians worldwide (not just in California) have been waiting decades for the well-documented genocide under the Ottoman Empire to attain the global recognition rightly given to other crimes against humanity, such as the Holocaust and apartheid. France and twenty other countries have done so. If the United States joined them, it would advance this legitimacy enormously. Yet von Hoffman questions the "value" of acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. Let's see, was there a "value" to characterizing the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda as genocide?

When planning the Holocaust, Hitler famously asked, "Who remembers the Armenians?" By remembering the Armenians, we stand against everything this question represents. Every crime against humanity that attains the weight of historical record provides precedent and ammunition against such crimes happening in the future. When we condemn historical wrongs, we also articulate intolerance for similar wrongs, present and future. Von Hoffman, in contrast, seems to believe that to decry an historical crime somehow means there is "less justice" for other atrocities such as the horrors currently enacted in Iraq, as if justice were a limited commodity, not a principle for the ages.

He also believes that since the genocide occurred "almost a century ago," it affects no one today. I would argue that Turkey's treatment of those who attempt to break the silence about the genocide (for example, the prosecution of writers for "insulting Turkishness," including Turkish novelists Orhun Pamuk and Elif Shafak, and Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was murdered by a Turkish nationalist) demonstrates that the genocide remains very much relevant, particularly as Turkey attempts to join the European Union. Germany, another Union member, has acknowledged and repented for its crimes. Should we expect less from Turkey?

My grandmother is 93 years old and a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her father and brother were slaughtered by Turkish troops, and other members of her family died in the march across the desert. She has hoped for this moment her entire life while other survivors, family and friends, have passed away. It offends me to the core that von Hoffman would belittle her long wait for justice.