For a week now, students walking along Bruin Walk may have seen
grotesque images of the Armenian Genocide ““ emaciated
children, dismembered bodies and dead Armenians swinging from the
noose.
These images were displayed in commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide.
Thursday, Armenian and non-Armenian students at UCLA mourned and
condemned the genocide with a silent march throughout campus and a
rally at Bruin Plaza.
A bill recognizing the genocide was passed in the state Senate
on Thursday.
Armenian Student Association President Raffi Kassabian said the
graphic images are needed to inform students of the genocide.
“Many political science and 20th century history classes
don’t talk about the genocide,” he said. Approximately
50 students quietly carried signs in memory of those killed in the
genocide.
“Genocide unpunished is genocide encouraged,” read
one commemorator’s sign. Another called Mount Ararat
“Turkey’s prize from the genocide.”
Armenians identify Mount Ararat with their 3,000-year-old
historic homeland.
On a very hot and bright day, for an hour-long outdoor march,
all participants wore black to remember what happened 90 years ago,
as their ancestors began a 19-day, 215-mile forced march through
the arid deserts of Syria.
This act began nine years of violence that Armenians say killed
1.5 million of their people.
The marchers were solemn, yet willing to answer the questions of
passersby, especially if in regard to the continuing Turkish denial
of genocide and the United States’ and other countries’
refusal to classify the events as genocide.
“The unrelenting denial by the Turkish government deprives
it of moral standing in the international community,” said
Armenian history Professor Richard Hovannisian in an e-mail. He is
currently in Armenia for a genocide conference.
Some students feel that the Turkish denial both insults their
past and makes the world more hospitable to other perpetrators of
genocide.
“By saying it didn’t happen, you deny our
history,” said Johnny Apikian, a fourth-year business
economics student. “It may be cliche to say history repeats
itself, but it does.”
Armenian Americans have tried unsuccessfully to get the United
States to recognize the events as genocide.
Naz Koulloukian, a fourth-year communication studies student,
said he has been attending the annual protest at the Los Angeles
Turkish consulate since he was eight years old, and would be there
again this Saturday. He said his family’s history was forever
altered after his grandmother’s parents were killed by the
Ottoman Turks, and his grandmother was then raised in a Syrian
orphanage.