Remembering Armenian Genocide admirable, not hateful
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 21, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Like many others in the UCLA community, I was distressed to read
Fatma Asli Velieceoglu’s submission to the Daily Bruin
misleadingly titled “Armenian propaganda against Turkey
untrue, divisive” (Feb. 10). Her allegation that Armenians
have engaged in a campaign of hatred against Turkey utterly
contradicts my experience as a teacher at UCLA for the past 25
years.
During that time, I have had the pleasure of having hundreds of
students of Armenian heritage here. My contact with these
intellectually and morally engaged young men and women has been a
highlight of my academic career.
One major reason is that all of them have been passionately
concerned about Turkey’s shameful denial of the Armenia
Genocide almost 90 years ago. Their focus has properly been on
educating their fellow students about one of the most horrific eras
of 20th-century history.
In all of my conversations with Armenian American students and
others, with no exceptions whatever, I have heard no expression of
hatred toward Turks or anyone else. Their sole focus has been on
demanding that Turkey acknowledge its historical accountability for
the mass murders of Armenians.
I join my Armenian brothers and sisters in working against
genocide denial. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I feel an
enduring solidarity with all people whose lives have been shattered
by both genocide and its progeny, the cynical refusal to
acknowledge historical responsibility.
We live in an era where countless thousands of human beings were
slaughtered in Cambodia and Rwanda and presently in Sudan.
Velieceoglu should take advantage of her educational opportunity at
UCLA to learn about the sorry historical legacy of the 20th and
early 21st centuries, including her own government’s
continuing refusal to acknowledge its past.
Genocide deniers might begin by engaging in thoughtful dialogue
with many of the students Velieceoglu foolishly maligned in her
Daily Bruin submission.
Von Blum is a professor of African American studies and
communication studies.
