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The Armenian Genocide
Brian
Detroit, MI Moderator
Call to action for members of newbuddhist.com
"Urge PBS Not to Give Air-Time to Genocide Deniers"
Despite over 10,000 signatures on an online petition and thousands of ANCA WebFaxes and individual letters and phone calls, PBS continues to defend its decision to provide air time to Armenian Genocide deniers during a panel discussion scheduled to follow the documentary "The Armenian Genocide" by Andrew Goldberg.
You can fill out an quick online petition to urge PBS NOT to give airtime to genocide deniers. As the petition letter states, PBS wouldn't really give airtime to holocaust deniers, or defenders of slavery in America, or neo-nazis, so why would they air deniers of another great human tragedy?
I urge concerned members of the newbuddhist sangha to please take a minute to fill out the following form.
On a side note, I'm proud to say that my local PBS station, DPTV (Detroit) is refusing to air this
Thanks!
"Urge PBS Not to Give Air-Time to Genocide Deniers"
Despite over 10,000 signatures on an online petition and thousands of ANCA WebFaxes and individual letters and phone calls, PBS continues to defend its decision to provide air time to Armenian Genocide deniers during a panel discussion scheduled to follow the documentary "The Armenian Genocide" by Andrew Goldberg.
You can fill out an quick online petition to urge PBS NOT to give airtime to genocide deniers. As the petition letter states, PBS wouldn't really give airtime to holocaust deniers, or defenders of slavery in America, or neo-nazis, so why would they air deniers of another great human tragedy?
I urge concerned members of the newbuddhist sangha to please take a minute to fill out the following form.
On a side note, I'm proud to say that my local PBS station, DPTV (Detroit) is refusing to air this
Thanks!
0
Comments
"I am writing to ask you to please co-sign a Congressional letter urging
the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) not to provide a national television
audience to those who deny the Armenian Genocide. The deadline to cosign
is Friday, March 10, 2006."
That, Point ONE, the Turks are a PROUD people steeped in a PROUD AND ANCIENT MYSTIQUE AND RIGID WAY OF DEALING WITH SUCH ISSUES and, Point TWO, that any nonbinding resolution that is approved would be seen as an unforgivable trespass on our part against their eternal Honour —all of this sort of thinking is from the Humane point of view irrelevant and grossly callous to human life.
Bernard Clairvaux would write:
NOW, this is a BUDDHIST SITE.
I wanna hear Buddhist concepts and precepts from y'all.
PRICELESS is the Life we are given. I know that's a Buddhist teaching. Surely their are scores more.
Greatness comes from doing things in a new way that makes others quite uncomfortable for a while. Yet a great and good person will not hurt others, just shake things up that needed badly to be rearranged, resorted, or looked at again.
'Nuff said.
((Off-topic: KoB, I LOVE your signature right now.))
It has taken me years to come to terms with my own anti-Turkish prejudice arising from my father's accounts of his time in the Mesopotamian campaign during WW1. My practice has enabled me to recognise the existence of the prejudice and place 'markers' so that I can notice when it arises. It is precisely for that reason that I tend to avoid commenting on the state of Turkish politics.
On the subject of a decision by one nation to decide to call another nation's actions "genocide", this seems both problematic and risky. It was precisely for this reason that the definition is enshrined in UN resolutions, making it supra-national. Which of the nations can truly adopt moral high ground on the subject of genocide? For the US to preach|(or the UK, or Germany, or anywhere) to chuck stones risks a return in kind against our glass houses.
Because those of us who take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha find resonance in every aspect of daily life, public, political action of this sort requires us to reflect on whether it is congruent with our belief and practice. Although such an event may appear outwith our normal debate on Buddhism, we would hardly be true to our belief in interbeing were we to ignore that it is a matter that concerns many people deeply.
No one responsible for the Armenian Genocide is alive today. And while the event was indeed tragic, I have a question that is twofold. Who should apologize? And who should they apologize to?
I think you're misunderstanding the issue here. It's not about getting an apology from anyone, to anyone. Nor is it simply about applying a label to something that happened in the past. It's about correcting an historical wrong, and an especially serious one.
Not only have these atrocities never been acknowledged by the Turkish government, there are those who continue to deny, to this day, that these crimes ever occurred... even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Not unlike those who deny the Jewish Holocaust.
This issue is about a global, historical acknowledgment of the massacre of a people. It is vastly important...historically, socially and politically. It's also tricky, as Simon pointed out, because we do, indeed, live in glass houses.
But imagine if it were globally, historically believed that the Europeans who came to the New World had never perpetrated the atrocities they did against the Native peoples. Imagine if it were the official policy of all North and South American governments to deny that any such atrocities occurred. And imagine the same for Germany.
Canada wasn't a sovereign country when European settlers arrived and wreaked havoc on the Native people here. Yet we, as a country, still officially acknowledge what our forefathers did, we don't deny it ever happened and we don't teach our children lies. Granted, it took a lot of pressure and many, many years to admit it officially. But eventually we did. (At this point, obviously, we could get into a deep discussion about how begrudgingly it was acknowledged and we could go on for hours and hours about all the horrible things that happened that have not yet been acknowledged officially, including all the land disputes and ongoing law suits against those white people who tortured Native children in "schools" not all that long ago. And so many other things. But I'm trying to keep it as concise as I can.)
Like others before them, the Armenian people are asking for an official acknowledgment of the terrible suffering and murder of a huge amount of their people in the not too distant past. If you can put yourselves in their place, imagine their history was your history, you might feel differently about it.
Who can acknowledge my suffering for me? If someone else tells me I have suffered great wrongs by their hand, does that make it true? Can that assuage my feelings of pain, loss, etc.? Has anything been rectified by apologies and recognitions? Do large groups of people really learn from the past; could recognition stop this from happening again?
On a personal level, I would have to say that if my people, my village, my tribe, my country had suffered under someone else's hand... if I had suffered under someone else's hand... No amount of recognition is going to change that. Only I can deal with my own suffering. No one can do it for me. Seeking apologies and recognition, maybe even rectification (is that a word?!) is only a way of clinging to the past and really does no personal good.
Also, Brigid, the story you told about Canada's recognition of what their forefather's did paints a vivid picture about how the kind of recognition that means something can only come from within. No one could force Canada to truly recognize their wrongs, they had to work that out on their own.
On a national/global/political level, I think it bears repeating that "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." As always, I would rather see our time, energy and money go into our own country. We have so much work that can be done here to improve our own lives. Global trade is great, but I'm beginning to think our political involvement with other countries should stop there.
You make a very good point, MoC, about it being unreasonable to expect anything other than ego-satisfaction from a recognition that we have been tortured and our people targeted for destruction (I speak as one much of whose family died in the extermination camps). Nevertheless, recognition by the perpetrators and their heirs goes some way to validating the pain. Justice requires some form of acknowledgment by the guilty and, if possible, restitution.
My problem with your last paragraph is that the lines drawn on a map which delineate 'our country' and 'your country' are entirely arbitrary. Where does your need end and another's begin? Should the EU have said, after 9/11, "This is a US problem. Not our country"? Should the US have refused aid to the UK after 1939? Should France not have aided the revolutionaries in the Colonies against imperialism? Should we not have brought pece to Sierra Leone?
If you consider that global trade is a good thing, it implies that you enter into contracts and agreements with 'foreign countries'. Should thid occur without any thought to morals or ethics? But if we are to consider an ethical dimension, who should establish the rules?
Protectionism and isolationism have been features of US history from time to time but have never lasted for the simple reason that we cannot pretend for long that we are alone on the planet or, even. that we are the only worthwhile people.
To those of us who, like myself, were brought up in the aftermath and with the consequences of global conflict and, as a result, tend towards internationalism, it is a wonderful moment when the Nobel Peace prize is won by an international organisation and a US scientist/politician. Our problems today are no longer local (if they have ever been) and any thought of a "pull up the ladder, I'm alright Jack" approach dooms us all.
Whilst I have real reservations about the move by the Democrats in Congress to declare the slaughter of the Armenians a genocide within the legal definition of that term (an international definition underwritten by the US), I applaud the subtext that we should acknowledge and condemn, publicly, criminal acts wherever they are carried out.
At a personal level, it seems to me that unless we are able, within the structure of our practice, to see in a clear-eyed way, the lack of skill and, dare I say it, pure ego-egocentricity of some of our actions, judgments and thoughts, how are we to return to the Noble Eightfold Path? The same obtains in a family, a community or a nation, surely.
Does acknowledging genocide itself keep it from happening again? No. But, by acknowledging what has been done wrong in the past, by learning from history, we can take steps to prevent such actions in the future. We need not punish the sons for the sins of the fathers, but we should be watchful to prevent a new generation from repeating those sins. Ignoring the genocidal rampages of the past and present is nothing more than burying your head in the sand.