ARMENIANS GET ALLIES IN GENOCIDE TEACHINGS
GROUP STANDS UP 'AGAINST DENIAL'
21-04-2006 17:30:00 | USA | Articles and Analyses
By Yvonne Abraham, Boston Globe Staff
April 20, 2006
Leading politicians and groups from a range of communities
are joining with Armenians in their battle to ensure that the
Armenians' early-20th-century history be taught as genocide.
The Armenians are fighting a federal lawsuit that seeks to
include opposing views of the genocide in teaching materials for
Massachusetts high schools.
A new group, called kNOw Genocide, includes the Jewish
Community Relations Council, the Irish Immigration Center, the
Massachusetts Council of Churches, Rwanda Outlook, and the
Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, among others. Standing
with them will be Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Lieutenant
Governor Kerry Healey -- both gubernatorial candidates -- and
several state legislators.
A rally tomorrow at the State House is expected to draw
representatives from the diverse coalition, in a testament to
the political clout that the Armenian community has in
Massachusetts.
''This allows our community, together with other
communities, to stand together against denial," said Anthony
Barsamian, a member of the Armenian Assembly of America board,
based in Washington. ''And those who try to deny genocide will
be beaten back."
The coalition is being launched at a time of considerable
debate over events in Ottoman Turkey early last century. Several
PBS stations were criticized this week for airing a documentary
called ''The Armenian Genocide" and declining to air an
accompanying panel discussion that included scholars who have
denied that a genocide took place.
Those who believe that both views should be heard accused
PBS stations, including Boston's WGBH, of bowing to pressure
from Armenians and their supporters.
Armenians and many historians have long maintained that the
events of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey -- in which more than 1 million
Armenians were killed and many more were driven from their homes
-- constituted genocide.
In Massachusetts, home to about 30,000 Armenians,
legislators established a day of remembrance for victims.
But the Turkish government, and some historians, say what
happened should not be described as genocide because the deaths
were part of a civil war that resulted in the murder of innocent
people on both sides.
In the lawsuit, now pending at US District Court in Boston,
a teacher and a student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High
School, and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, have
demanded that the state Department of Education include
dissenting views on the Armenian genocide in a curriculum guide
on the topic.
A draft of that guide originally included the dissenting
views, but did not mandate that they be taught in Massachusetts
schools. The plaintiffs say the removal violates freedom of
speech.
The attorney general, who is defending the state, argues
that because the curriculum guide is a government document, it
is not bound by free speech. Armenians and supporters say
presenting opposing views of the 1915 events is like denying the
Holocaust.
The struggle has drawn support from other groups who say
they speak from their own painful histories of oppression.
''As members of the Jewish community, we identify with the
Armenian community in terms of the Armenian genocide, and it's
important to fight denial," said Nancy Kaufman, executive
director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater
Boston. ''We thought this was a battle that had been won long
ago."
Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in
the Department of Education suit, said his clients are not
denying that a genocide took place. ''We are not admitting it,
we're not denying it, we're taking no position," he said. ''We
simply want to open up the avenues for honest debate and restore
the censored articles to the Massachusetts curriculum."