We, Asian do not know much of the Asia Minor. They seems to be far away from our region. I come across the history of Armenian Genocide while study the Kurd people. Finally, I realized that human can be very cruel when politic and power are in their mind, to divide mankind with racist ideal for power control. Looking at North East India, Burma, Iraq, Kurd, and now Armenia, there are many races in this world that are still suffering,and there are many political policies in the modern world that are still racist based.
I happen to read an article from Sinchew Daily, which highlight the point that race of a person may possibility be contaminated, and it is difficult to find a pure race in the modern world. Looking at Han Chinese, after 5000 years of civilization, civil wars, ancient wars between kingdoms, some ancient kingdom appeared, some disappeared, silk routes(both land and sea), all the historical events that resulted in inter-marriage, cultural integration, is that any pure Han Chinese that still exists in the modern world that derived from the Han dynasty? The modern Han Chinese may have the blood of Mongol, Manchu, Tibet, Hui,and other minorities who once stayed together or fighting each other in an ancient time ...... The real history was not written by the ordinary people , the history we read was written by the ruling party or the winning or controlling parties. The kingdom and people who had lost the war, and disappear, where did they go(ordinary people)? not all lost their lives during the war, some will be assimilated with other races, and survive, but lost in history.....
....who can strongly said their race is pure race in modern world? Did you know that Cantonese is a cousin of Vietnamese? Palestine are cousin of the Jews?
We did not read the history with open mind, we read with our blind eyes like the many kings of ancient kingdoms,and the racist politician of modern world. We become racist and fanatic on our racial background. When politician manipulated on our wrong historical perception, discrimination, genocide happen... it happen in the past..., it happen now, even in the era of borderless world..
..and based on religion, all human should be equal.....
Modern man survive, due to ability to adapt to their different environment on earth, due to their diversity at different part of the world; not common identity.....not base on racial background alone...In the borderless world, when the mother earth is sick, people of different racial background should stand and face the problem together...race is not important anymore, it is only a family history......an identification of genetic history and social unit ...
2009, 94th anniversary of Armenian Genocide.
Armenian Genocide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, translit.: Hayoc’ C’eġaspanowt’yown; Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Calamity (Մեծ Եղեռն, Meç Eġeṙn, Armenian pronunciation: [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn]), refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million.Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, as many Western sources point to the systematic, organized manner the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The Armenian Genocide is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty-one countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The majority of Armenian diaspora communities were founded as a result of the Armenian genocide.
(source: wikipedia)
I suddenly remember the Nanking Massacres....the Japanese government still did not acknowledged their war crime,and still living within their own wound of the past sin. The younger generation of both countries have to bear the scars of the past history of their countries. The war criminal should learn from the German, who are brave to accept the responsibility, and admit the fact of the history in WW2, provide the victim families with consolation they expected, and was forgive by Jews. Both the German and Jews were able to move on with confidence in the new chapter of their lives .......
Orhan Pamuk
Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk was charged under Article 301, which carried 6 months jail sentence, for speaking out about his country's guilt. In Oct 2005, after the prosecution had begun, Pamuk reiterated his views in a speech given during an award ceremony in Germany: "I repeat, I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey.". After the international outcry, the charge was however dropped on 22-1-2006.
Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born on 7 June 1952 in Instanbul) generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in Humanities at Columbia University , where he teaches comparative literature and writing.
One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over seven million books in more than fifty languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006—the first Nobel Prize to be awarded to a Turkish citizen.(source: wikipedia)
Orhan Pamuk And The Armenian Genocide
Hrant Dink
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was recently murdered for his efforts to bridge the divide between both people.
Hrant Dink (September 15, 1954 – January 19, 2007) was a Turkish Armenian editor, journalist and columnist. As editor- in- chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos , Dink was a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey. Dink was best known for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey; he was often critical of both Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide, and of the Armenian diaspora's campaign for its international recognition. Dink was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness, while receiving numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists(source : wikipedia). He was murdered on Jan 2007 in Istanbul by a young nationalist of only 17 years old.
The father of his alleged killer claims that his son was only led astray "because he loves his country and his nation.".Yet the world is silence........
Let us all learn from this painful history, and let it be the past....that will never happen in this modern world again......but beware, there are still politician who are waiting to use the platform for their political agenda.
I read this history with tears from my eyes, and pain in my heart.......
Related articles:
1. Kurdistan Recognizes the Armenian Genocide, http://www.cilicia.com/armo10i_kurdistan.html
2. Armenian Genocide, from www.wikipedia.org
3. Book: "Survivors: an oral history of the Armenian genocide"(1999), by Loma Touryan Miller, published by University of California Press.
4. Armenian Genocide, by ABC Australia, www.youtube.com
5. Orhan Pamuk, article by www.wikipedia org.
6. Germany, Turkey and the Armenian Genocide Part 1-7, www.youtube.com; this is a good documentary, must see. It revealed that Germany was also involved.
7. Greek Genocide 1914-1923 , from http://www.greek-genocide.org/armenian_genocide.html
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