Vers 12 h : Cérémonie au Mémorial à Ixelles, place Michaux (parc Tenbosch)
Rond 12u : Plechtigheid op de Memorial te Elsene, Michauxplaats (Tenbosch Park)
Le Comité des Arméniens de Belgique
Het Armeens Comité van België
Contact : [email protected]
US Senate to vote on Armenian ‘genocide’ draft
Armenian Community in the U.S. presented to the U.S. Senate a draft which demands the U.S. recognition of so-called Armenian genocide.
The draft presented by Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chief Robert Menendez and Republican Senator Mark Kirk who want to label the death of Armenians in 1915 as “genocide”. Menendez claimed that “Armenian genocide” is an undeniable reality and U.S. should absolutely recognize it and also should convince international actors for the recognition of genocide claims.
The draft includes the following:
-To remember and observe the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2014.
-That the President should work toward an equitable, constructive, stable, and durable Armenian-Turkish relationship that includes the full acknowledgment by the Government of the Republic of Turkey of the facts about the Armenian Genocide.
-That the President should ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide.
Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer and Ed Markey are among those to pen their names to the draft which must now be voted by the Senate.
Then, with the approval of the Democrat majority leader Harry Reid, the draft may be brought to the attention of the Senate’s General Assembly.
The draft which will be discussed at Foreign Affairs Committee of Senate calls Obama for recognizing Armenian genocide and putting effort on the development of Turkey-Armenia relations.
After the draft is approved by Foreign Affairs Committee of Senate, it will be represented to the Senate majority leader. If the draft takes the approval of Senate majority leader, it will be voted by General Assembly. (http://www.worldbulletin.net)
Armenian foreign minister: Denial is continuation of genocide
The Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, participated in an international conference on the prevention of genocide hosted in Brussels, Belgium, where he spoke on the prevention of genocide. Organized by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the conference was titled “The Responsibility to Defend,” and marked the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide.
The conference was attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland, heads of a number of other international organizations, Foreign Ministers from more than 30 countries, other high-level delegates, and prominent scholars.
In his speech, Nalbandian emphasized that failing to punish an act of genocide effectively lays the ground for its recurrence in the future.
“Since the adoption of the 1948 Genocide Convention, efforts were put for the elimination of the consequences of the Holocaust,” Nalbandian said in his speech. “The ensuing history of 60 years — Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and other tragedies — demonstrated that all good will is not enough to prevent crimes against humanity from happening again and again.”
“When we talk about impunity and absence of condemnation as a solid ground for recurrence of genocides, many refer to Hitler’s quotation from 1939 August when he rhetorically asked ‘Who today still speaks of the massacre of Armenians?’ But even before coming to power, in one of his interviews to a German newspaper in June, 1931, Hitler contemptuously referred to the massacres of Armenians as a possible option for repetition with other peoples,” Nalbandian recalled.
Nalbandian continued by stressing that the cause of recurrent genocides is the absence of an adequate, united international response to genocide when one takes place, and, moreover, the international community’s failure to retroactively punish genocide after it has occurred.
“Genocide prevention is a burden that should be shared,” Nalbandian said. “This requires political commitments by governments to stop genocide from happening anywhere in the world without subordinating that noble humanitarian cause to any geopolitical calculations.”
Nalbandian also argued that genocide prevention must include constant vigilance and detection of an impending human rights crisis well ahead of time. The international community must keep track of anti-human rights trends, such as hate speech, ethnic violence, and government propaganda, in order to act in time to prevent genocide.
Nalbandian also stressed that education about past genocides must be encouraged and its restriction in any country should be admonished by the international community.
“Such knowledge is extremely useful because grave experience shows that perpetrators of genocide in different geographical areas and different historical periods have been quick to identify the tactics of their murderous predecessors and learn from them,” Nalbandian said.
“The Young Turk’s Committee of Union and Progress in Turkey, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in Germany, the Hutu National Revolutionary Movement for Democracy in Rwanda all used special paramilitary organizations as the main perpetrators of mass killings. These were Teskilat Mahsusa, the Schutzstaffel, Interahamwe. There were several similarities in the genocidal processes as treatment of victims, expropriation of their properties, ways of extermination in these as well as other crimes against humanity.”
“The remembrance days of the victims of genocides, Mets Yeghern, Shoah, remembrance days in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and other genocides should be approached with willingness to move towards recognition and reconciliation. True reconciliation does not mean forgetting the past or feeding younger generations with tales of denial. The civilized world resolutely rejects the incitement of hatred, racism, dissemination of intolerance, the denial of genocide, crimes against humanity under the guise of freedom of expression. Denial is a continuation of genocide,” Nalbandian concluded. (http://asbarez.com, April 1, 2014)
http://www.info-turk.be/428.htm#Bruxelles
