• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • flickr
  • blogger
  • youtube

blog-logo

  • Home
  • UAE Armenians
  • Hrach Kalsahakian
  • Հայերեն բաժին
  • Archives
    • News
    • Articles
    • Directory

Why give platform to Armenian genocide deniers?

April 7, 2006
A+ A-
Email Print

 


By Aris Janigian


 


I am a devoted viewer of PBS. From ?Masterpiece Theater? to ?Sesame Street,? I have always considered it a bastion of creative and intelligent TV.



But two weeks ago, PBS stabbed me and every other Armenian-American in the back when it announced that its upcoming documentary, ?The Armenian Genocide,?? would be followed on some stations by a panel discussion featuring two so-called scholars who claim that the genocide is a myth.



Worse, according to genocide historian Peter Balakian, PBS threatened to pull the documentary if he and another genocide scholar declined to participate ?on the other side? in the panel discussion, which was taped in January.



Although the documentary is not slated to run until April, programmers across the country are now deciding whether to air it at all, air it alone or air it with the taped debate. ?We believe (the genocide) is settled history,? said Jacoba Atlas, senior vice president of programming at PBS, but ?it seemed like a good idea to have a panel and let people have their say.? This is perverse. Either there was a genocide or there wasn?t.



Would anyone tolerate David Irving, the notorious Holocaust revisionist, hashing it out on a panel with Elie Wiesel after a documentary on the Nazi concentration camps? Should we give janjaweed reps air time the next time we run a documentary on the genocide in Darfur?



Why has PBS resorted to doublespeak in regard to the Armenian genocide?



The answer is simple: PBS is capitulating to politics. For years the Turks, America?s so-called allies, have issued threats against any organization or country that challenges their quack reading of history. When the French recognized the Armenian genocide, the Turks recalled their ambassador to France, boycotted French products and canceled military contracts. They have threatened to withdraw strategic support from our country if we should dare make the same mistake.



Article 301 of the Turkish penal code makes it a crime to ?denigrate? Turkey by, for instance, mentioning the Armenian genocide in public.



In March, the famous Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk did just that and faced charges. International outcry and a technicality got his case dismissed, but others are still in peril.



One of PBS?s genocide deniers, University of Louisville history professor Justin McCarthy, was invited by the Turkish Grand Assembly ? reeling from European Union pressure to come clean about its genocidal past ? for a pep talk this month.



?I know that the Turks will resist demands to confess to a crime they did not commit,? McCarthy intoned,?no matter the price of honesty. I have faith in the integrity of the Turks.?


 


These rousing words brought the lawmakers, many of whom had sanctioned Article 301, to their feet. Does PBS really want to give such a belligerent falsifier air time?



?It seemed like a good idea,? Atlas said. Raphael Lemkin wouldn?t agree. He coined the word ?genocide? in 1944, and viewed the Armenian case as a seminal example of such an atrocity. Norman Mailer, Carol Gilligan, John Updike and Cornel West wouldn?t think so either.


 


They signed a petition, along with 150 other scholars and writers, reaffirming the genocide?s historical truth. Directors of Holocaust research centers around the world ? including Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer in 2000 ? also signed a statement declaring the Armenian genocide an incontestable historical fact.



Even the Turks are on the record as acknowledging the truth. When Turkey was defeated in World War I, the allied powers created a tribunal that included members of the new Turkish government.



The butchers behind the genocide had fled by then, but they were found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia. Certainly the few remaining genocide survivors, now in their 90s, would not think it ?a good idea? to give the deniers a forum.


They were children when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were herded like cattle through the scorching slaughterhouse of the Anatolian desert toward one of 25 concentration camps.


 


They watched as their people were murdered, raped, tortured and left to starve in those camps.


 


Armenian homes and shops were occupied and looted; ancient churches were turned into mosques or barns, used for target practice by the Turkish army or burned to the ground to eliminate any trace of Armenians in those lands.


 


By the time the Turks were finished, an estimated 1.5 million people had perished ? more than half the Armenian population in Turkey. Armenians called it Medz Yeghern: ?The Great Cataclysm.?



The denial of genocide, as many have rightly observed, is the continuation of genocide.



It should be clear to PBS, to Atlas and to programmers across the nation that the American public broadcasting system should not be complicit in a murderous lie.

Aris Janigian is the author of the novel ?Bloodvine.?


 


Source:


?Daily Journal?, Caracas, Venezuela


Issue 13th March 2006


URL: http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com/article.asp?ArticleId=230059&CategoryId=13303

author-avatar

Posted by Azad-Hye

Like to share?

Social Media

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • flickr
  • blogger
  • youtube
Newer PostVartkes's List
Older PostVenezuelan born duduk player Pedro Eustache

POPULAR

item-thumbnail

Rebecca Malikian’s novel “The Caravan of Death”

July 10, 2015
item-thumbnail

Erebouni pen launched in Dubai and other cities

April 12, 2015
item-thumbnail

Vardavar (water pouring) international festival in Armenia gains popularity

July 17, 2015
item-thumbnail

Essam Nagy’s documentary “In The Beginning Was Armenia” (Interview)

January 11, 2020
item-thumbnail

Anna Dolabjian: I feel life coaching as a dream coming true

January 18, 2018

LATEST

item-thumbnail

Liana Ghaltaghchyan is the new Managing Director at the Children of Armenia Fund

January 10, 2023
item-thumbnail

Indian Journalist Venkatesh Remakrishnan mentions the Armenians of Chennai

October 30, 2022
item-thumbnail

Renovation of the Ghukasavan Cultural Center’s main hall

December 1, 2021
item-thumbnail

Nobel Prize winner Ardem Patapoutian

October 7, 2021
item-thumbnail

Armenian Church of the Virgin Mary in Basra, Iraq

August 30, 2021

COMMENTS

Azad-Hye on In memory of AUB Medical Alumni who died during the First World War
Azad-Hye on Kessab Ousoumnasirats celebrates centennial
Lawrence Danny CPA on Kessab Ousoumnasirats celebrates centennial
Stephensmith on Pizza making vending machine invented by Puzant Khachadourian
ALEXANIAN on Astghik Voskerchyan: Every element in my environment has a role in my creations

Categories

  • Applications
  • Art
  • Books
  • Business
  • Celebrations
  • Chinese Armenians
  • Courses and Camps
  • Cyprus Armenians
  • Diaspora Armenians
  • Documentaries
  • Education
  • Egyptian Armenians
  • Energy
  • Ethiopian Armenians
  • European Armenians
  • Festivals
  • Genocide
  • History
  • Hrach Kalsahakian
  • Indian Armenians
  • Interviews
  • Iraqi Armenians
  • Language
  • Lebanese Armenians
  • Music
  • Poetry
  • Politics
  • Religion
  • Rural Armenia
  • Science
  • Syrian Armenians
  • Tourism
  • Turkish Armenians
  • UAE Armenians
  • Websites
  • Հայերեն բաժին

CUSTOM LINKS

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact

RANDOM POSTS

item-thumbnail

Հայաստանի 8 հրաշալիքները. ԵՐԿՐՈՐԴԸ` «ՏաԹևեր» ճոպանուղին

item-thumbnail

Կուսակցական մամուլը սփիւռքի մէջ. Հրաչ Քալսահակեան

item-thumbnail

«ՔԱՅԼ ԴԵՊԻ ՏՈՒՆ» ծրագրի հյուրընկալ ընտանիքների համար նախատեսված հայտադիմում

TAG CLOUD

Armenian Art Armenian Catholics Armenian Christmas Armenian Costumes Armenian Genocide Armenian Songs Armenian Velvet Revolution Azad-Hye Celebrations Cyprus Armenians Daniel Varoujan Hejinian Diaspora Diaspora Armenians Education Emma Kant Emma Karapetyan Ethiopian Armenians Garni Geghard Genocide Goris Greece Hidden Armenians History Iraqi Armenians Kessab Kessabtzis Language Lebanese Armenians Meri Martirosyan Music Music Application Nana Aramyan Nikol Pashinyan Norway Ottoman Empire Paris Speech Therapy Syrian Armenians Syunik Turkey Turkish Armenians UAE Armenians Vardavar Western Armenia

Search this website

© 2023 Azad-Hye . Designed by Wpinhands
Scroll