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Nearly a century after the Armenian genocide, these people are still being
slaughtered in Syria
Robert Fisk
Sunday 1 December 2013
And now, almost unmentioned in the media, their holy places are also being
desecrated
Just over 30 years ago, I dug the bones and skulls of Armenian genocide
victims out of a hillside above the Khabur River in Syria. They were young
people - the teeth were not decayed - and they were just a few of the
million-and-a-half Armenian Christians slaughtered in the first Holocaust
of the 20th century, the deliberate, planned mass destruction of a people
by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.
It was difficult to find these bones because the Khabur River - north of
the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour - had changed. So many were the bodies
heaped in its flow that the waters moved to the east. The very river had
altered its course. But Armenian friends who were with me took the remains
and placed them in the crypt of the great Armenian church at Deir ez-Zour,
which is dedicated to the memory of those Armenians who were killed - and
shame upon the `modern' Turkish state which still denies this Holocaust -
in that industrial mass murder.
And now, almost unmentioned in the media, these ghastly killing fields have
become the killing fields of a new war. Upon the bones of the dead
Armenians, the Syrian conflict is being fought. And the descendants of the
Armenian Christian survivors who found sanctuary in the old Syrian lands
have been forced to flee again - to Lebanon, to Europe, to America. The
very church in which the bones of the murdered Armenians found their
supposedly final resting place has been damaged in the new war, although no
one knows the culprits.
Yesterday, I called Bishop Armash Nalbandian of Damascus, who told me that
while the church at Deir ez-Zour was indeed damaged, the shrine remained
untouched. The church itself, he said, was less important than the memory
of the Armenian genocide - and it is this memory which might be destroyed.
He is right. But the church - not a very beautiful building, I have to say
- is nonetheless a witness, a memorial to the Holocaust of Armenians every
bit as sacred as the Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Jewish
Holocaust in Israel. And although the Israeli state, with a shame equal to
the Turks, claims that the Armenian genocide was not a genocide, Israelis
themselves use the word Shoah - Holocaust - for the Armenian killings.
In Aleppo, an Armenian church has been vandalised by the Free Syrian Army,
the `good' rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime, funded and armed by
the Americans as well as the Gulf Sunni Arabs. But in Raqqa, the only
regional capital to be totally captured by the opposition in Syria,
Salafist fighters trashed the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs and
set fire to its furnishings. And - God spare us the thought - many hundreds
of Turkish fighters, descendants of the same Turks who tried to destroy the
Armenian race in 1915, have now joined the al-Qa'ida-affiliated fighters
who attacked the Armenian church. The cross on top of the clock tower was
destroyed, to be replaced by the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant.
Nor is that all. On 11 November, when the world honoured the dead of the
Great War, which did not give the Armenians the state they deserved, a
mortar shell fell outside the Holy Translators Armenian National School in
Damascus and two other shells fell on school buses. Hovhannes Atokanian and
Vanessa Bedros, both Armenian schoolchildren, died. A day later, a bus load
of Armenians travelling from Beirut to Aleppo were robbed at gunpoint. Two
days later, Kevork Bogasian was killed by a mortar shell in Aleppo. The
Armenian death toll in Syria is a mere 65; but I suppose we might make that
1,500,065. More than a hundred Armenians have been kidnapped. The
Armenians, of course, like many other Christians in Syria, do not support
the revolution against the Assad regime - although they could hardly be
called Assad supporters.
Two years from now, they will commemorate the 100th anniversary of their
Holocaust. I have met many survivors, all now dead. But the Turkish state,
supporting the present revolution in Syria, will be memorialising its
victory at Gallipoli that same year, a heroic battle in which Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk saved his country from Allied occupation. Armenians also fought in
that battle - in the uniform of the Turkish army, of course - but I will
wager as many dollars as you want that they will not be remembered in 2015
by the Turkish state which was so soon to destroy their families.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/nearly-a-century-after-the-armenian-genocide-these-people-are-still-being-slaughtered-in-syria-8975976.html
slaughtered in Syria
Robert Fisk
Sunday 1 December 2013
And now, almost unmentioned in the media, their holy places are also being
desecrated
Just over 30 years ago, I dug the bones and skulls of Armenian genocide
victims out of a hillside above the Khabur River in Syria. They were young
people - the teeth were not decayed - and they were just a few of the
million-and-a-half Armenian Christians slaughtered in the first Holocaust
of the 20th century, the deliberate, planned mass destruction of a people
by the Ottoman Turks in 1915.
It was difficult to find these bones because the Khabur River - north of
the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zour - had changed. So many were the bodies
heaped in its flow that the waters moved to the east. The very river had
altered its course. But Armenian friends who were with me took the remains
and placed them in the crypt of the great Armenian church at Deir ez-Zour,
which is dedicated to the memory of those Armenians who were killed - and
shame upon the `modern' Turkish state which still denies this Holocaust -
in that industrial mass murder.
And now, almost unmentioned in the media, these ghastly killing fields have
become the killing fields of a new war. Upon the bones of the dead
Armenians, the Syrian conflict is being fought. And the descendants of the
Armenian Christian survivors who found sanctuary in the old Syrian lands
have been forced to flee again - to Lebanon, to Europe, to America. The
very church in which the bones of the murdered Armenians found their
supposedly final resting place has been damaged in the new war, although no
one knows the culprits.
Yesterday, I called Bishop Armash Nalbandian of Damascus, who told me that
while the church at Deir ez-Zour was indeed damaged, the shrine remained
untouched. The church itself, he said, was less important than the memory
of the Armenian genocide - and it is this memory which might be destroyed.
He is right. But the church - not a very beautiful building, I have to say
- is nonetheless a witness, a memorial to the Holocaust of Armenians every
bit as sacred as the Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Jewish
Holocaust in Israel. And although the Israeli state, with a shame equal to
the Turks, claims that the Armenian genocide was not a genocide, Israelis
themselves use the word Shoah - Holocaust - for the Armenian killings.
In Aleppo, an Armenian church has been vandalised by the Free Syrian Army,
the `good' rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime, funded and armed by
the Americans as well as the Gulf Sunni Arabs. But in Raqqa, the only
regional capital to be totally captured by the opposition in Syria,
Salafist fighters trashed the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs and
set fire to its furnishings. And - God spare us the thought - many hundreds
of Turkish fighters, descendants of the same Turks who tried to destroy the
Armenian race in 1915, have now joined the al-Qa'ida-affiliated fighters
who attacked the Armenian church. The cross on top of the clock tower was
destroyed, to be replaced by the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant.
Nor is that all. On 11 November, when the world honoured the dead of the
Great War, which did not give the Armenians the state they deserved, a
mortar shell fell outside the Holy Translators Armenian National School in
Damascus and two other shells fell on school buses. Hovhannes Atokanian and
Vanessa Bedros, both Armenian schoolchildren, died. A day later, a bus load
of Armenians travelling from Beirut to Aleppo were robbed at gunpoint. Two
days later, Kevork Bogasian was killed by a mortar shell in Aleppo. The
Armenian death toll in Syria is a mere 65; but I suppose we might make that
1,500,065. More than a hundred Armenians have been kidnapped. The
Armenians, of course, like many other Christians in Syria, do not support
the revolution against the Assad regime - although they could hardly be
called Assad supporters.
Two years from now, they will commemorate the 100th anniversary of their
Holocaust. I have met many survivors, all now dead. But the Turkish state,
supporting the present revolution in Syria, will be memorialising its
victory at Gallipoli that same year, a heroic battle in which Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk saved his country from Allied occupation. Armenians also fought in
that battle - in the uniform of the Turkish army, of course - but I will
wager as many dollars as you want that they will not be remembered in 2015
by the Turkish state which was so soon to destroy their families.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/nearly-a-century-after-the-armenian-genocide-these-people-are-still-being-slaughtered-in-syria-8975976.html