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One hundred years of solitude: The Armenian Genocide and ethnic
cleansing, 2015 - Huffington Post
11:37 * 08.01.15
By Christopher Atamian
It has been nearly one hundred years since April 24, 1915 -- the
infamous day when Armenian intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire were
rounded up in the dead of night and sent to be executed in inland
concentration camps in Ayash and Chankari. This event followed on
nearly two decades of ethnic cleansing and pogroms against Armenians
that included the murder of some 300,000 Armenians by Sultan Abdul
Hamid in 1896 and 30,000 killed during the Adana Massacre in 1909.
The 1896 Erzerum Massacres of Armenians
In the ensuing decade, the entire Armenian Plateau and the rest of the
Ottoman Empire was ethnically cleansed of 1.5 Million Armenians as
well as 1.5 million Assyrian and Pontic Greeks--nearly the entire
empire's Christian population. Christians were rounded up and locked
inside churches that were set on fire and burned alive or thrown into
caves with sulfur thrown on top of them and cremated in primitive gas
chambers. The Turks, aided and abetted by their ally the German Kaiser
seized Christian properties and bank accounts, raped and enslaved
women and children and forced thousands to convert to Islam under pain
of death. The vast majority of the Armenian population was deported to
concentration camps in Syria--a thousand-mile trek through the desert
that few survived. Those that did often ended up dying of disease and
malnutrition. The local Arab population recalls seeing the Armenian
survivors straggle in emaciated and famished like wild animals,
emerging from the desert sands like some frightening army of living
dead. Many fell to their knees and broke down, invoking the name of
all-powerful Allah to ask what could possibly have befallen these poor
refugees.
One hundred years of official Turkish state denial have left Armenians
alone and bitter, but all over the world, this Christian people known
as the "Jews of the Caucasus" have rebuilt communities and prospered
as they have in Soviet and now independent Armenia. The reasons behind
the Armenian Genocide include a surreal mix of ethnic and financial
jealousy--the Armenian Amira class for example ran everything from the
state mint to the bread factories and most of the empire's industry,
while the Greeks and Levantines were the most successful diplomats and
merchants as well.
Taking advantage of Christian missionary zeal in the Empire, Armenians
were also its most educated element. The Turks, who had lost the
entire Western part of their empire during the Serbian and Greek Wars
of Independence reacted to the cloak of opportunity presented by WWI
when the West had other concerns, to launch a veritable full-scale
jihad against the infidel dhimmi or non-Muslim minorities.
A century later we know that unfortunately genocide is not a Turkish
specialty, though they carried theirs out with a sometime grotesque
zeal, releasing prisoners and the insane from jails so that the
Armenians and other Christians would be massacred with particular
viciousness. The Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two, the killing
fields of Cambodia, the Bosnian cleansing by Serbs only twenty five
years ago and most recently the Rwandan Genocide when brother tribes
of Hutu set upon their Tutsi brothers, hacking people to death by the
thousands with primitive machetes, lead us to the unfortunate
conclusion that the genocidal instinct is deeply ingrained in human
DNA. As the theorist Marc Nichanian has pointed out elsewhere, what
was the Trojan War if not an example of early ethnic cleansing as the
Greeks laid waste to Troy's entire population, also of Hellenic
ethnicity?
Today, Nicholas Kristof and other leading journalists bring us news of
another frightening instance of ethnic cleansing -- this time of the
Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Reacting against the supposed
fear of Muslim fundamentalism and population rates in Myanmar, the
Rohingya have been rounded up and put in primitive camps without
access to any medical treatment and insufficient food. They are often
tortured. Women are dying in childbirth. To me, perhaps the most
shocking aspect of this genocide-in-progress is that it is being
carried out by Buddhists, led by the particularly controversial monk
Wirathu, who heads the "969 Movement" and is quoted in a New York
Times Op Doc as saying that the Muslim Rohingya minority "reproduce
like fish (rabbits) and should all be killed."
As someone who practices Buddhist meditation and who has always
admired Buddhism for its emphasis on peace and non-violence, these
stomach-turning events are particularly sickening. Where is the West
during all this? Where is President Obama? Even more reprehensible is
the silence of Nobel Laureate and famed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi of
Myanmar, who was jailed for years by that country's military junta and
that of the country's current president Thein Sein who denies that the
Rohingya are being persecuted. To date, the Rohingya have not yet been
exterminated, but they will if we do not speak up. So please when you
read these words, write your senators and representatives. Write
Samantha Power at the U.N. and anyone else in your community who
wields political and/or religious authority and tell them: STOP THE
GENCOIDE OF THE ROHINGYA people. Speak up now or forever hold your
peace. And rest assured, if you do not, one day you or your
descendants or those of someone you may unfortunately find themselves
in a similar situation -- as history does indeed have the unfortunate
habit or repeating itself.
http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/01/08/100-years-of-solidtude-after-genocide/1553655
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/one-hundred-years-of-soli_b_6419864.html
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
cleansing, 2015 - Huffington Post
11:37 * 08.01.15
By Christopher Atamian
It has been nearly one hundred years since April 24, 1915 -- the
infamous day when Armenian intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire were
rounded up in the dead of night and sent to be executed in inland
concentration camps in Ayash and Chankari. This event followed on
nearly two decades of ethnic cleansing and pogroms against Armenians
that included the murder of some 300,000 Armenians by Sultan Abdul
Hamid in 1896 and 30,000 killed during the Adana Massacre in 1909.
The 1896 Erzerum Massacres of Armenians
In the ensuing decade, the entire Armenian Plateau and the rest of the
Ottoman Empire was ethnically cleansed of 1.5 Million Armenians as
well as 1.5 million Assyrian and Pontic Greeks--nearly the entire
empire's Christian population. Christians were rounded up and locked
inside churches that were set on fire and burned alive or thrown into
caves with sulfur thrown on top of them and cremated in primitive gas
chambers. The Turks, aided and abetted by their ally the German Kaiser
seized Christian properties and bank accounts, raped and enslaved
women and children and forced thousands to convert to Islam under pain
of death. The vast majority of the Armenian population was deported to
concentration camps in Syria--a thousand-mile trek through the desert
that few survived. Those that did often ended up dying of disease and
malnutrition. The local Arab population recalls seeing the Armenian
survivors straggle in emaciated and famished like wild animals,
emerging from the desert sands like some frightening army of living
dead. Many fell to their knees and broke down, invoking the name of
all-powerful Allah to ask what could possibly have befallen these poor
refugees.
One hundred years of official Turkish state denial have left Armenians
alone and bitter, but all over the world, this Christian people known
as the "Jews of the Caucasus" have rebuilt communities and prospered
as they have in Soviet and now independent Armenia. The reasons behind
the Armenian Genocide include a surreal mix of ethnic and financial
jealousy--the Armenian Amira class for example ran everything from the
state mint to the bread factories and most of the empire's industry,
while the Greeks and Levantines were the most successful diplomats and
merchants as well.
Taking advantage of Christian missionary zeal in the Empire, Armenians
were also its most educated element. The Turks, who had lost the
entire Western part of their empire during the Serbian and Greek Wars
of Independence reacted to the cloak of opportunity presented by WWI
when the West had other concerns, to launch a veritable full-scale
jihad against the infidel dhimmi or non-Muslim minorities.
A century later we know that unfortunately genocide is not a Turkish
specialty, though they carried theirs out with a sometime grotesque
zeal, releasing prisoners and the insane from jails so that the
Armenians and other Christians would be massacred with particular
viciousness. The Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two, the killing
fields of Cambodia, the Bosnian cleansing by Serbs only twenty five
years ago and most recently the Rwandan Genocide when brother tribes
of Hutu set upon their Tutsi brothers, hacking people to death by the
thousands with primitive machetes, lead us to the unfortunate
conclusion that the genocidal instinct is deeply ingrained in human
DNA. As the theorist Marc Nichanian has pointed out elsewhere, what
was the Trojan War if not an example of early ethnic cleansing as the
Greeks laid waste to Troy's entire population, also of Hellenic
ethnicity?
Today, Nicholas Kristof and other leading journalists bring us news of
another frightening instance of ethnic cleansing -- this time of the
Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Reacting against the supposed
fear of Muslim fundamentalism and population rates in Myanmar, the
Rohingya have been rounded up and put in primitive camps without
access to any medical treatment and insufficient food. They are often
tortured. Women are dying in childbirth. To me, perhaps the most
shocking aspect of this genocide-in-progress is that it is being
carried out by Buddhists, led by the particularly controversial monk
Wirathu, who heads the "969 Movement" and is quoted in a New York
Times Op Doc as saying that the Muslim Rohingya minority "reproduce
like fish (rabbits) and should all be killed."
As someone who practices Buddhist meditation and who has always
admired Buddhism for its emphasis on peace and non-violence, these
stomach-turning events are particularly sickening. Where is the West
during all this? Where is President Obama? Even more reprehensible is
the silence of Nobel Laureate and famed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi of
Myanmar, who was jailed for years by that country's military junta and
that of the country's current president Thein Sein who denies that the
Rohingya are being persecuted. To date, the Rohingya have not yet been
exterminated, but they will if we do not speak up. So please when you
read these words, write your senators and representatives. Write
Samantha Power at the U.N. and anyone else in your community who
wields political and/or religious authority and tell them: STOP THE
GENCOIDE OF THE ROHINGYA people. Speak up now or forever hold your
peace. And rest assured, if you do not, one day you or your
descendants or those of someone you may unfortunately find themselves
in a similar situation -- as history does indeed have the unfortunate
habit or repeating itself.
http://www.tert.am/en/news/2015/01/08/100-years-of-solidtude-after-genocide/1553655
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/one-hundred-years-of-soli_b_6419864.html
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress