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The Right Time To Condemn Genocide

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  • The Right Time To Condemn Genocide

    OPEN FORUM: THE RIGHT TIME TO CONDEMN GENOCIDE
    By Roxanne Makasdjian

    San Francisco Chronicle
    March 30 2010

    A recent vote in a congressional committee to simply reaffirm America's
    stand against genocide became, instead, a legislative referendum on
    a broader fundamental question: Who decides when the United States
    speaks about genocide?

    Earlier this month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee considered
    a resolution calling on the president to properly characterize the
    Ottoman Turkish government's centrally planned and systematically
    executed campaign of race extermination against the Armenian
    people from 1915-1923 as "genocide" and to ensure that U.S. foreign
    policymakers put the lessons of this crime to work in preventing
    future atrocities.

    The decision should have been easy enough. The International
    Association of Genocide Scholars, the pre-eminent group of independent
    scholars who have studied the matter, is on record in support of
    congressional affirmation. Our own U.S. archives are replete with
    eyewitness testimonies by U.S Foreign Service officers stationed
    in the Ottoman Empire at the time. U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau
    referred to the mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians as a "campaign
    of race extermination."

    The U.S. House of Representatives has passed similar legislation
    honoring the victims and survivors of the Armenian Genocide in 1975
    and 1984, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed similar
    measures in 2000, 2005 and 2007. Yet despite these resolutions,
    today's committee spent almost six hours debating the measure, and
    approved it by only one vote.

    So what was it that forced the vote to be so close? What prompted the
    Obama administration's last-minute opposition, even though as senators
    and candidates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton
    had all -- repeatedly -- called for Armenian Genocide recognition?

    The answer is both sad and clear: foreign intervention in the U.S.

    political process in the form of outright bullying by the Turkish
    government. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Foreign
    Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and their multimillion-dollar Washington,
    D.C., lobbyists, including former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and
    former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, led a full-blown offensive
    against the measure. Along the way, Ankara, using its purchasing
    power, blackmailed a number of profit-hungry but ethically challenged
    corporate and defense firms into supporting its shameful campaign to
    cover up the Armenian Genocide.

    In the wake of the U.S. House panel's vote, Turkey withdrew its
    ambassador and threw what amounts to a diplomatic temper tantrum - very
    loud, but not very lasting. They did so again, less than a week later,
    when Sweden's Parliament voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide. In
    fact, Prime Minister Erdogan went so far as to threaten the impending
    deportation of some 100,000 Armenians currently in Turkey -- a chilling
    reminder of their Ottoman forefathers' genocidal campaign.

    Thankfully, Chairman Howard Berman and the House Foreign Affairs
    Committee he leads refused to give in to Turkey's threats, joining
    more than 20 other countries, including 11 of Turkey's NATO allies,
    which have recognized the Armenian Genocide.

    The supporters of the Armenian Genocide resolution understand that
    bowing to Ankara's threats today only helps perpetuate the denial
    and the diplomatic bullying, and opens the door to similar pressures
    tomorrow to deny other genocides.

    Here in San Francisco, we know the answer. Each year, our Board of
    Supervisors and I pass a resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide
    and calling on Congress to end U.S. complicity in Turkey's genocide
    denial. It's time for Congress -- led by our own Speaker of the
    House Nancy Pelosi -- to finally stand up to Ankara's bullying and
    do the same.

    Roxanne Makasdjian is the chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee
    of the San Francisco Bay Area.

    http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/opinion shop/detail?&entry_id=60255
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