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AP: Symbol Of Armenian Suffering Gets Brief Display

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  • AP: Symbol Of Armenian Suffering Gets Brief Display

    SYMBOL OF ARMENIAN SUFFERING GETS BRIEF DISPLAY

    Associated Press International
    November 19, 2014 Wednesday 2:22 AM GMT

    BY KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press
    WASHINGTON

    WASHINGTON (AP) - To Armenian-Americans, the display Tuesday of a
    hand-woven rug at the White House Visitor's Center represented a
    hard-fought victory in their push for official recognition of the
    killings of their ancestors experienced nearly a century ago.

    "It's a silent, beautiful rebuttal to those who deny the murder of
    a million-and-a-half people," said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

    Schiff was one of several members of Congress at the event. The
    lawmakers represent districts with thousands of Armenian-Americans.

    The rug, hand-woven by orphans and delivered to President Calvin
    Coolidge in 1925, has mostly sat in storage since the Coolidge family
    returned it to the White House in 1982 as a gift. It measures 11.5
    feet by 19 feet (3 by 6 meters), took 18 months to complete and
    contains more than 4 million knots.

    Armenian-Americans want the U.S. government to acknowledge that
    the deaths of their ancestors constituted a genocide, a term used
    to describe violence intended to destroy an entire group based on
    ethnicity, race or religion.

    Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
    Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by
    scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however,
    denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been
    inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

    The United States does not call the deaths genocide; doing so could
    risk U.S. relations with Turkey, an important ally. Turkey withdrew
    its U.S. ambassador four years ago when a House panel approved
    a resolution branding the killing of Armenians as genocide. The
    resolution eventually stalled.

    As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to recognize the
    deaths as genocide. But in a 2012 event, as president, he stopped
    short of using that term, calling it "one of the worst atrocities of
    the 20th century."

    Mark Stroh, a spokesman for the White House's National Security
    Council, said the president and other senior administration officials
    have repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact that 1.5 million
    Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days
    of the Ottoman Empire

    "(They have) stated that a full, frank and just acknowledgement of
    the facts is in our all interests, including Turkey's, Armenia's and
    America's," Stroh said.

    The rug was previously displayed in nonpublic settings as a result of
    extraordinary requests, Stroh said. In one instance, in the 1980s,
    for a member of Congress, and in the other, in the 1990s, to allow
    it to be seen in the White House by a woman involved in its making.

    Among the first visitors to view the rug Tuesday was John Marshall
    Evans, who served as ambassador to Armenia for two years under
    President George W. Bush. Evans said he was replaced as ambassador 18
    months after he described the Armenian deaths as genocide and that
    the U.S. needs to recognize the facts. He's not satisfied with the
    Obama administration's approach, either.

    Lawmakers began a letter-writing campaign to the White House last
    year after reports that the display of the rug at the Smithsonian
    Castle had been cancelled. Stroh said the rug was not lent to the
    Smithsonian in that instance because its display for an afternoon
    would have been in support of a book launch, which he said would not
    have been appropriate.

    Aram Hamparin, executive director of the Armenian National Committee
    of America, said the display of the rug was progress but added,
    "We've let a foreign country impose a gag rule on what Americans can
    and cannot say on the Armenian genocide."

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