Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Armenian Genocide Demo Banned In Berlin

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Armenian Genocide Demo Banned In Berlin

    ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DEMO BANNED IN BERLIN

    Expatica, Netherlands
    March 14 2006

    BERLIN - Political leaders and human rights groups on Tuesday welcomed
    a decision by Berlin police to ban demonstrations aimed at the Armenian
    genocide in World War I.

    Police on Monday banned two protests due to have been held in the
    German capital this week which supported the official Turkish position
    that killings of Christian Armenians by Muslim Turks in 1915 did not
    amount to genocide.

    Organizers of one of the protests warned Europe's cities would "go
    up in flames like Paris" unless Europeans stopped blaming Turkey for
    the Armenian genocide.

    The ban was justified by police who said they feared violence and
    because they suspected demonstrators would try to both deny and
    glorify the events of 1915.

    "It is unacceptable when planned demonstrations seek to deny the
    genocide of Armenians during the First World War and make veiled calls
    for violence in Germany," said Frank Henkel, the opposition Christian
    Democratic Union interior affairs spokesman in the city government.

    A human rights group, the Society for Threatened Peoples, also
    welcomed the ban and called for legislation to prevent all public
    events denying or glorifying genocide or war crimes.

    Most Western historians term the Armenian killings genocide and say
    that between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians were killed or died
    during the massacres.

    Parliaments in at least seven European countries, including France
    and Sweden, have passed resolutions saying the killings were genocide.

    Germany has about 1.8 million resident Turkish nationals out of a
    total population of 82 million.

    Mainstream Turkish-German groups had withdrawn support for the
    controversial demonstrations at the weekend.
Working...
X