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Armenians get allies in genocide teachings

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  • Armenians get allies in genocide teachings

    Boston Globe, MA
    April 20 2006

    Armenians get allies in genocide teachings
    Group stands up 'against denial'

    By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | April 20, 2006

    Leading politicians and groups from a range of communities are
    joining with Armenians in their battle to ensure that the Armenians'
    early-20th-century history be taught as genocide.


    The Armenians are fighting a federal lawsuit that seeks to include
    opposing views of the genocide in teaching materials for
    Massachusetts high schools.

    A new group, called kNOw Genocide, includes the Jewish Community
    Relations Council, the Irish Immigration Center, the Massachusetts
    Council of Churches, Rwanda Outlook, and the Cambodian Mutual
    Assistance Association, among others. Standing with them will be
    Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey
    -- both gubernatorial candidates -- and several state legislators.

    A rally tomorrow at the State House is expected to draw
    representatives from the diverse coalition, in a testament to the
    political clout that the Armenian community has in Massachusetts.

    ''This allows our community, together with other communities, to
    stand together against denial," said Anthony Barsamian, a member of
    the Armenian Assembly of America board, based in Washington. ''And
    those who try to deny genocide will be beaten back."

    The coalition is being launched at a time of considerable debate over
    events in Ottoman Turkey early last century. Several PBS stations
    were criticized this week for airing a documentary called ''The
    Armenian Genocide" and declining to air an accompanying panel
    discussion that included scholars who have denied that a genocide
    took place.

    Those who believe that both views should be heard accused PBS
    stations, including Boston's WGBH, of bowing to pressure from
    Armenians and their supporters.

    Armenians and many historians have long maintained that the events of
    1915 in Ottoman Turkey -- in which more than 1 million Armenians were
    killed and many more were driven from their homes -- constituted
    genocide.

    In Massachusetts, home to about 30,000 Armenians, legislators
    established a day of remembrance for victims.

    But the Turkish government, and some historians, say what happened
    should not be described as genocide because the deaths were part of a
    civil war that resulted in the murder of innocent people on both
    sides.

    In the lawsuit, now pending at US District Court in Boston, a teacher
    and a student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, and the
    Assembly of Turkish American Associations, have demanded that the
    state Department of Education include dissenting views on the
    Armenian genocide in a curriculum guide on the topic.

    A draft of that guide originally included the dissenting views, but
    did not mandate that they be taught in Massachusetts schools. The
    plaintiffs say the removal violates freedom of speech.

    The attorney general, who is defending the state, argues that because
    the curriculum guide is a government document, it is not bound by
    free speech. Armenians and supporters say presenting opposing views
    of the 1915 events is like denying the Holocaust.

    The struggle has drawn support from other groups who say they speak
    from their own painful histories of oppression.

    ''As members of the Jewish community, we identify with the Armenian
    community in terms of the Armenian genocide, and it's important to
    fight denial," said Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish
    Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. ''We thought this was
    a battle that had been won long ago."

    Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the
    Department of Education suit, said his clients are not denying that a
    genocide took place. ''We are not admitting it, we're not denying it,
    we're taking no position," he said. ''We simply want to open up the
    avenues for honest debate and restore the censored articles to the
    Massachusetts curriculum."
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