The website of the Armenian community of Great Britain has posted before and after photographs of the recently vandalized Armenian Genocide monument in Cardiff, Wales, stating that the “South Wales Police are investigating the damage.”

 Image courtesy Asbarez

The century-old Asbarez Armenian-American daily has also posted an Armenpress article on the destruction and a new photograph that shows the vandalized monument.

And although few would doubt that the hate crime was committed by Turkish nationalist(s), a blogger from Cardiff expresses hope that nationalist Turks are not behind the vandalism:

It’s hard not to feel hatred when something like this happens. In my home town of Cardiff, last November, from generous donations from a local Armenian, a memorial to the Genocide was erected in a public park. During the inauguration we had to listen to disturbing calls of hatred from about 50 Turkish protestors who did everything during the prayers, speeches, and songs, to disturb the ceremony.

It seems they have now stooped to a new low and in line with the UK’s memorial day for holocaust, have decided to hack the cross off from the memorial. I must admit I didn’t think they would do this. Maybe it wasn’t commited by Turks. I hope it wasn’t. The police are searching for information.

The BBC has posted a photograph of the recently vandalized Armenian Genocide monument in the Welsh city of Cardiff that shows the cross on the memorial entirely wiped out.

 Image: Vandalized Armenian Genocide Monument in Cardiff, Wales, courtesy BBC

According to a report by ic Welsh, reposted by Hyelog:

A MONUMENT set up in Cardiff to remember 1.5 million Armenians who were massacred in 1915 was vandalised ahead of a service for all the victims of genocide.

The memorial in the Temple of Peace, Cathays, Cardiff, made of sandstone and Welsh slate, was struck with a sledgehammer on Saturday night, smashing the cross off it.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day and a service was held to remember all those who have died at the hands of ethnic cleansing.

Members of the Turkish community have condemned the damage.

Caerphilly Councillor Ray Davies, who campaigned for the Armenian monument to be erected, said many people at the service yesterday were close to tears when they saw what had happened.

“The desecration of the monument reminds us that we must always be vigilant against racism and hatred which is never far from the surface,” he said.

The pillar of pink stone was unveiled in November to remember all those Armenians who were murdered by Ottoman Turks in 1915.

[…]

But the service still went ahead as planned, despite protests from a small number of people who shouted through loud hailers.

Director of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs Stephen Thomas said: “It was particularly saddening for the Armenians present that this happened on the day of the Holocaust Memorial Day. This service wasn’t specific to the Armenians. We were trying to be all-inclusive about all those historical events where people have been massacred. It wasn’t very helpful in terms of trying to create a bridge and links between Turkey and Armenia that this was carried out. People were upset when they turned up and saw what had happened.”

Hal Savas, a member of the five-man delegation from the Committee for the Protection of Turkish Rights, was present at the service.

“Whoever has done it should be ashamed of themselves,” he said. “We would condemn any damage done to any religious monument.”

Hours before a January 27, 2008 commemoration for the Holocaust and murdered Armenian-Turkish Hrant Dink, members of the Armenian community in Wales discovered the site for the event – a traditional Armenian khachkar (literally, cross-stone) opened in November of 2007 – had been vandalized by a hammar left at the scene. 

Image: A photograph from the November 3, 2007 opening ceremony of the Armenian Genocide commemorative memorial in Cardiff, Wales (United Kingdom) shows the khachkar (cross-stone) that was vandalized by a hammer in the morning of a scheduled event to commemorate the Holocaust and remember Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Photo courtesy ACCC.

A press-release by the Wales-Armenia Solidarity, posted by Unzipped, reads:  

The tiny Welsh Armenian community were targeted with a despicable racist attack on Holocaust Memorial Day. The new Armenian Genocide Monument (which was erected by the community under the leadership of John Torosyan in November) was desecrated in the early hours of the morning before important ceremonies were held today to Commemorate the Holocaust, and to remember Hrant Dink.

The ornate Armenian Cross on the monument was smashed to bits by persons unknown using a hammer, which was left at the scene of the crime.

Mark Grigorian, a journalist and a blogger at LiveJournal, wrote earlier on the morning of January 27 that a text message had just informed him that “[t]he Armenian Khachkar monument in Cardiff commemorating the Armenian Genocide, which had been consecrated only in November in the face of vehement opposition by official Turkey and UM Turkish nationalist groups has been badly vandalised abd desecrated last night.”

Eilian Williams, talking on the vandalism, has blamed the “Committee for the Protection of Turkish Rights”  under the leadership of Hal Savas – a member of The Muslim Council of Britain – for the hate crime.

Indeed, the announcement for the commemoration ceremony, posted at Seta’s Armenian Blog and apparently written before the news of the vandalism, expressed fears for violent Turkish protests quoting Hal Savas as saying, “[w]e will be out in force this time.” Savas’ group had protested the unveiling of the memorial in November of 2007, as reported by the BBC.

Image: Soldiers of Azerbaijan filmed using sladghammers to reduce sacred Armenian gravestones to dust in December of 2005. Visit www.djulfa.com for more information

It is not clear why the hammer – that was used to smash the cross on the genocide monument to pieces –  was left at the scene. Perhaps a symbolic gesture to the December of 2005 destruction of the largest medieval Armenian cemetery in the world where Azerbaijani soldiers used sladghammers to reduce the sacred stones to dust?

As Turkey is considering to amend Article 301 of its penal code – that has been used to prosecute those who bring up the subject of the Armenian Genocide – Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has ruled that individual citizens can bring civil actions against their countrymen who bring up the topic of the Genocide.

Today’s Zaman, a relatively moderate newspaper from Turkey, reports that Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has “opened the way” for Turkish individuals to bring civil actions against their country’s best-known novelist and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for having talked about the Armenian Genocide.

The Supreme Court of Appeals yesterday nullified a local court ruling that dropped a civil suit against Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk for his controversial remarks about Armenian allegations of genocide that were published in a Swiss magazine in 2005.

A civil suit had been filed by a group of five people, including relatives of martyrs who claimed that Pamuk put the blame for atrocities committed against Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire on the entire Turkish nation with his remarks. During an interview to Swiss Das magazine Pamuk had said: “We killed 30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians in these lands. Nobody but me dares to say this in Turkey,” in remarks that drew ire from the Turkish public — particularly from nationalist circles.

İstanbul’s Şişli Third Civil Court of First Instance dropped the case in a 2006 ruling on the grounds that there had been no violation of the individual rights of the plaintiffs in Pamuk’s remarks. The plaintiffs appealed the court decision.

[…]

The court ruling has opened the way for thousands of families of martyrs to file cases against Pamuk. The lawyer of the plaintiffs, Kemal Kerinçsiz, who is a well-known ultranationalist, said earlier that all the families of martyrs would file cases against Pamuk and take away his Nobel Prize money if the Supreme Court of Appeals nullified the local court ruling.

Azerbaijan’s “Azeri Press Agency” has posted an article, republished by Today.az, on the newly-opened Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum – that documents the deliberate destruction of the largest medieval Armenian cemetery in the world – stating that the project features “false reports and footages.”

It also quotes an Azerbaijani parliamentarian making a reference to my article on the Djulfa destruction in History Today which is widely featured in the Britannica Online Encyclopedia: “Armenians and their scientists posted articles covering these absurd and false claims against Azerbaijan in several encyclopedias, including Britanica (sic) encyclopedia.”

So, according to Azerbaijani nationalists, I have some sort of access to the Britannica website where I can post my “false” articles. Actually, I only found out that Britannica had republished my article after I did Google search on the History Today article. 

Here is the Azerbaijani reaction:

Armenians create website named Djulfa, Azerbaijani region and post false reports and footages (sic)

[ 18 Jan 2008 13:53  ]

“Website www.djulfa.com registered by Armenians falsifies the history of Nakhchivan, integral part of Azerbaijan, posts claims that this territory is an ancient Armenian land and false footages (sic) that Azerbaijanis destroy Armenian monuments in Djulfa,” parliamentarian Ganira Pashayeva told APA.

She said that the website named Djulfa is the next subversion of Armenians against Azerbaijan and added that all should worry about the fact that Armenians have squatted some of the domains connected with the names of Azerbaijan, Karabakh, Baku, Sumgayit, Nakhchivan and the occupied regions.
“The measurers (sic) should be accelerated for returning such domains, including www.djulfa.com to Azerbaijan and informing the world community about subversion against Azerbaijan. The relevant bodies should work out the process of registration of domains connected with the name of Azerbaijan in order to prevent such a problem in future. We should inform the world community on the level of media outlets, different embassies and Foreign Ministry that the materials posted on this website are false,” the parliamentarian said.
Ganira Pashayeva said that Armenians are anxious about our informing world community about vandalism acts of Armenia and their destructing cultural-historical monuments belonging to Azerbaijanis in occupied Azerbaijani regions including Nagorno Karabakh and historical lands of Azerbaijan and areas called Armenian Republic today and Armenians want to confuse international community.
“Not touching upon Armenian church in Baku is the indicator of the position of Azerbaijan in such issues. But all religious monuments belonging to Azerbaijan were destructed in Armenia today. This fact is enough for criticizing Armenians. To our regret, Armenians and their scientists posted articles covering these absurd and false claims against Azerbaijan in several encyclopedias, including Britanica (sic) encyclopedia,” she said.
MP stressed necessity of establishing body under one of the relevant state organizations for removing and observing this aggressive policy of Armenia against Azerbaijanis virtually.
“Especially, special measures should be taken for eliminating aggressive propaganda of Armenia against Azerbaijani monuments dating back to Christianity period. We should not allow Armenians to falsify history of Azerbaijan and present it to world community,” she said. /APA/

Via Life Around Me from Bendib

During the same week when Israeli president Shimon Peres apologized for the Kafr Kassem massacre of Arab civilians in 1956, official Armenia expressed its optimism that Israel will soon recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Written by the same author who reported the recent vandalism of Armenia’s Holocaust Memorial, an article in the Jerusalem Post states that an adviser to Armenia’s president explains that Israel’s affirmation of the Armenian Genocide is not a matter of if but of when.

The government of Armenia is “very hopeful” that Israel will soon recognize the World War I-era massacre of Armenians by Turks as an “act of genocide,” a senior Armenian official told The Jerusalem Post last week.

[…]

“I am very hopeful that Israel, step by step, will recognize it as well… We are very hopeful and we are waiting for it,” Yeritsyan said.

Contacted by the Post, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

[…]

Israel, an ally of the Republic of Turkey, has been avoiding the term “genocide” when talking about the extermination of the Armenians.  Furthermore, some Israeli leaders, including Shimon Peres, have been charged with genocide denial in their attempts to minimize the Armenian experience.  Peres, for instance, has been fiercely criticized for an earlier characterization of Armenian accounts of the Genocide as “meaningless.”  In his more recent refusal to refer to the Armenian Genocide as such, nonetheless, Peres has said it is up to Turkey and Armenia to solve the “issue.”

The fact that Peres has officially apologized for the Kafr Kassem massacre is very encouraging and should serve as an example to the Turkish government.

I am not talking about recognizing the Armenian Genocide tomorrow and placing plaques next to the “memorials” of the organizers of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey telling the truth.  Israel apologizes for killing 48 civilians; why doesn’t Turkey apologize for over a million death?

Let’s say that Turkey genuinely believes that “only” 300,000 Armenians were killed during World War I.  Isn’t that 300,000 lives to apologize for?  Let’s say Turkey genuinely thinks the term genocide cannot be applied to the Armenian case; why doesn’t it apologize for “the Armenian massacre” then?

The horrible truth is that the denial of the Armenian Genocide is not a simple refusal to apply the term genocide to the Armenian experience.  The denial of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey is refusal that any kind of crime has been committed against the Armenian people.  It is microdenial – an attempt to legitimize the extermination of the Armenian civilization from what is today’s Turkey.

The mainstream media religiously say that “Turkey refuses the word genocide” as though as the Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide only started after the word “genocide” was coined in 1944.

Years before anyone had word the term “genocide,” Turkey threatened to ban Hollywood movies if MGM produced a movie that dealt with resistance during the Armenian extermination based on a book banned by Hitler because of being written by a Jew.  After the State Department intervened, the movie was dropped.  Isn’t this absolute denial?

Via Groong, The Noyan Tapan News Agency informs that a theatre play denying the Armenian Genocide has been organized for Turkish prisoners.

ADANA, NOVEMBER 16, NOYAN TAPAN. In one of the prisons of Adana the
actors of the Chukurova’s Center of Culture and Art have staged the
“Yell: the tale of the so-called Armenian Genocide” performance.

As the Turkish press reports, the performance has been staged within
the frameworks of the cultural events organized by the management of
the prison for the prisoners.

Idris Shahin, the Head of the Chukurova’s Center of Culture and Art,
declared that the above-mentioned performance “telling about the
tale of the Armenian Genocide” will also be performed in a number of
villages of Turkey.

Are the Turkish officials going to release again their prisoners to “relocate” Armenians to Moon as was done in 1915? What’s the point in making prisoners to hate Armenians even more?

Here is Robert Fisk’s November 10, 2007 column in the Independent that I am posting in full.

Robert Fisk: Holocaust denial in the White House

The Turks say the Armenians died in a ‘civil war’, and Bush goes along with their lies

Published: 10 November 2007

How are the mighty fallen! President George Bush, the crusader king who would draw the sword against the forces of Darkness and Evil, he who said there was only “them or us”, who would carry on, he claimed, an eternal conflict against “world terror” on our behalf; he turns out, well, to be a wimp. A clutch of Turkish generals and a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign on behalf of Turkish Holocaust deniers have transformed the lion into a lamb. No, not even a lamb – for this animal is, by its nature, a symbol of innocence – but into a household mouse, a little diminutive creature which, seen from afar, can even be confused with a rat. Am I going too far? I think not.

Had the genocide that Bush refuses to acknowledge not taken place – as the Turks claim – the Americans would be asking the Armenians for permission to use Incirlik.

The “story so far” is familiar enough. In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish authorities carried out the systematic genocide of one and a half million Christian Armenians. There are photographs, diplomatic reports, original Ottoman documentation, the process of an entire post-First World War Ottoman trial, Winston Churchill and Lloyd George and a massive report by the British Foreign Office in 1915 and 1916 to prove that it is all true. Even movie film is now emerging – real archive footage taken by Western military cameramen in the First World War – to show that the first Holocaust of the 20th century, perpetrated in front of German officers who would later perfect its methods in their extermination of six million Jews, was as real as its pitifully few Armenian survivors still claim.

But the Turks won’t let us say this. They have blackmailed the Western powers – including our own British Government, and now even the US – to kowtow to their shameless denials. These (and I weary that we must repeat them, because every news agency and government does just that through fear of Ankara’s fury) include the canard that the Armenians died in a “civil war”, that they were anyway collaborating with Turkey’s Russian enemies, that fewer Armenians were killed than have been claimed, that as many Turkish Muslims were murdered as Armenians.

And now President Bush and the United States Congress have gone along with these lies. There was, briefly, a historic moment for Bush to walk tall after the US House Foreign Relations Committee voted last month to condemn the mass slaughter of Armenians as an act of genocide. Ancient Armenian-American survivors gathered at a House panel to listen to the debate. But as soon as Turkey’s fossilised generals started to threaten Bush, I knew he would give in.

Listen, first, to General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the Turkish armed forces, in an interview with the newspaper Milliyet. The passage of the House resolution, he whinged, was “sad and sorrowful” in view of the “strong links” Turkey maintained with its Nato partners. And if this resolution was passed by the full House of Representatives, then “our military relations with the US would never be as they were in the past… The US, in that respect, has shot itself in the foot”.

Now listen to Mr Bush as he snaps to attention before the Turkish general staff. “We all deeply regret the tragic suffering (sic) of the Armenian people… But this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings. Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror.” I loved the last bit about the “global war on terror”. Nobody – save for the Jews of Europe – has suffered “terror” more than the benighted Armenians of Turkey in 1915. But that Nato should matter more than the integrity of history – that Nato might one day prove to be so important that the Bushes of this world may have to equivocate over the Jewish Holocaust to placate a militarily resurgent Germany – beggars belief.

Among those men who should hold their heads in shame are those who claim they are winning the war in Iraq. They include the increasingly disoriented General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, and the increasingly delusional US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, both of whom warned that full passage of the Armenian genocide bill would “harm the war effort in Iraq”. And make no mistake, there are big bucks behind this disgusting piece of Holocaust denial.

Former Representative Robert L Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, has already picked up $12m from the Turks for his company, the Livingston Group, for two previously successful attempts to pervert the cause of moral justice and smother genocide congressional resolutions. He personally escorted Turkish officials to Capitol Hill to threaten US congressmen. They got the point. If the resolution went ahead, Turkey would bar US access to the Incirlik airbase through which passed much of the 70 per cent of American air supplies to Iraq which transit Turkey.

In the real world, this is called blackmail – which was why Bush was bound to cave in. Defence Secretary Robert Gates was even more pusillanimous – although he obviously cared nothing for the details of history. Petraeus and Crocker, he said, “believe clearly that access to the airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this resolution passes…”.

How terrible an irony did Gates utter. For it is these very “roads and so on” down which walked the hundreds of thousands of Armenians on their 1915 death marches. Many were forced aboard cattle trains which took them to their deaths. One of the railway lines on which they travelled ran due east of Adana – a great collection point for the doomed Christians of western Armenia – and the first station on the line was called Incirlik, the very same Incirlik which now houses the huge airbase that Mr Bush is so frightened of losing.

Had the genocide that Bush refuses to acknowledge not taken place – as the Turks claim – the Americans would be asking the Armenians for permission to use Incirlik. There is still alive – in Sussex if anyone cares to see her – an ageing Armenian survivor from that region who recalls the Ottoman Turkish gendarmes setting fire to a pile of living Armenian babies on the road close to Adana. These are the same “roads and so on” that so concern the gutless Mr Gates.

But fear not. If Turkey has frightened the boots off Bush, he’s still ready to rattle the cage of the all-powerful Persians. People should be interested in preventing Iran from acquiring the knowledge to make nuclear weapons if they’re “interested in preventing World War Three”, Bush has warned us. What piffle. Bush can’t even summon up the courage to tell the truth about World War One.

Who would have thought that the leader of the Western world – he who would protect us against “world terror” – would turn out to be the David Irving of the White House?

I didn’t know there are people in the world whose values permit to commit genocide.  At least, we now know of one people whose values don’t permit such an act.  

The quote of the week comes from U.S. visiting Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan who again denied the Armenian Genocide by saying Turkish “values do not permit our people to commit genocide.”

Oh, and by the way, Turkey is ready to examine whether there was genocide or not. 

From Agence France Press:

Turkish PM welcomes shelving of US ‘genocide’ bill

43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday welcomed a decision by US lawmakers to shelve debate on a bill labeling Ottoman Empire massacres of Armenians during World War I as “genocide.”

Speaking after talks here with President George W. Bush, Erdogan said the House of Representatives resolution on “the so-called Armenia genocide … has the potential to deeply damage our strategic cooperation.”

Fierce pressure from Turkey and the White House appears to have paid off for now, with the resolution’s Democratic authors agreeing late last month to delay a full House of Representatives vote after the bill was upheld by the foreign affairs committee.

“We view this with cautious optimism,” Erdogan said at the National Press Club, thanking the Bush administration and House members who had spoken out against the resolution for fear of its damage to ties with Turkey.

“We are ready to settle accounts with our history, but our documents indicate that no such genocide took place. In fact our values do not permit our people to commit genocide,” the Turkish leader said.

“Those who claim it, must prove it,” he said, renewing his offer to the Armenian government to set up a joint historical commission to examine the claims of genocide dating from the dying years of the Ottoman Empire.