Israel Charny calls for establishing organization of peoples that survived genocide

YEREVAN, April 22. / ARKA /. Speaking at the international social and political Global Forum against the Crime of Genocide in Yerevan today the executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, Israel Charny, called for establishment of an organization of peoples that survived genocides to be led by Armenia.

He said this organization will become a powerful blow to the policy of genocide denial. Its main function should be prevention of genocides, he said adding also it is time for experts in genocide studies to get engaged  in the prevention of crimes against humanity.

Speaking about the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, professor Charny stressed that it actually began in 1895, when Sultan Abdul Hamid issued an order for Muslims to start killing of Christian Armenians.

He said this fact alone shows that Turkey’s counter-arguments are baseless. Charney said then calls for jihad against Armenians are actually the same calls made by the Islamic State.

The gathering in Yerevan is part of a long string of events commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide. The two-day gathering has brought to Armenia 600 delegates from different countries.

Addressing the forum Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan said one of the topics to be discussed during the forum refers to the role of the memory and truth in overcoming the consequences of genocide. 

‘That is, truly, the most accurate way to pin it down since, as far as the crimes of genocide are concerned, the remembrance and contemporary reality are unavoidably interlaced. Genocide is a crime of such a vast scale, with such a severe damage inflicted that even many decades later its impact is felt by the descendants of both the victims and perpetrators, as well as by the entire international community.

For us, Armenians, remembrance is a moral obligation and, at the same time, inalienable individual and collective right. It is our moral duty and right to commemorate the one and a half milion of victims, inhumane sufferings endured by the hundreds of thousands, loss of the material and spiritual heritage accumulated by our people throughout millenia, extermination of the substantial part of the early 20th century Armenian intelligentsia, who mainly resided in Constantinople, that led to the mass slaughter. It is because of this cohesion of the right and duty that we have adopted the motto “I remember and demand” for the commemoration events.

It is impossible to disagree with the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who notes that “to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” Remembrance, meanwhile, is the best remedy for the descendants of those who perpetrated genocide to face their own history, and the best opportunity to restore the justice.” -0-