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Transitions Online, Czech Rep.
March 21 2014
Armenia compiles list of 1915-1916 victims as anniversary approaches
One year before the 100th anniversary of massacres at the hands of
Ottoman Turks that most Armenians consider a genocide, the country's
National Archive has announced that it will draft a list of victims'
names based on surviving records, according to Public Radio of
Armenia.
Amatuni Virabyan
Armenian National Archive head Amatuni Virabyan compared the
initiative to that of a Jewish effort after World War II that
"collected the names of 6 million victims and 3 million photos."
But he said it would be impossible to provide a definitive list of
Armenian casualties "as the initiative is too belated."
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians were driven out of
present-day Turkey in 1915-1916. Some were killed outright while
others wandered in the Syrian desert and elsewhere, often dying of
starvation.
Armenia and Turkey have a tense relationship because of Ankara's
reluctance to apologize or treat the acts as anything other than
wartime hostilities.
While Yerevan claims that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed
in the attacks, Ankara puts the number of deaths closer to 300,000.
According to members of the International Association of Genocide
Scholars, "More than a million were exterminated through direct
killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of
the Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient
civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years."
Virabyan said an Armenian commission worked on loss estimates in the
years following World War I in an unsuccessful effort to get
reparations.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation is raising funds to
integrate Armenian testimonies into its collection of accounts from
survivors of other genocides and ethnic cleansing, Public Radio of
Armenia reports, in time for the 100th anniversary of the killings in
April 2015.
http://www.tol.org/client/article/24227-the-baltics-get-a-us-guarantee-poland-speeds-up-missile-defense.html
March 21 2014
Armenia compiles list of 1915-1916 victims as anniversary approaches
One year before the 100th anniversary of massacres at the hands of
Ottoman Turks that most Armenians consider a genocide, the country's
National Archive has announced that it will draft a list of victims'
names based on surviving records, according to Public Radio of
Armenia.
Amatuni Virabyan
Armenian National Archive head Amatuni Virabyan compared the
initiative to that of a Jewish effort after World War II that
"collected the names of 6 million victims and 3 million photos."
But he said it would be impossible to provide a definitive list of
Armenian casualties "as the initiative is too belated."
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians were driven out of
present-day Turkey in 1915-1916. Some were killed outright while
others wandered in the Syrian desert and elsewhere, often dying of
starvation.
Armenia and Turkey have a tense relationship because of Ankara's
reluctance to apologize or treat the acts as anything other than
wartime hostilities.
While Yerevan claims that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed
in the attacks, Ankara puts the number of deaths closer to 300,000.
According to members of the International Association of Genocide
Scholars, "More than a million were exterminated through direct
killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of
the Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient
civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years."
Virabyan said an Armenian commission worked on loss estimates in the
years following World War I in an unsuccessful effort to get
reparations.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation is raising funds to
integrate Armenian testimonies into its collection of accounts from
survivors of other genocides and ethnic cleansing, Public Radio of
Armenia reports, in time for the 100th anniversary of the killings in
April 2015.
http://www.tol.org/client/article/24227-the-baltics-get-a-us-guarantee-poland-speeds-up-missile-defense.html