Posted on 01/23/2012 4:07:14 PM PST by PRePublic
The Associated Press Switzerland has convicted people of racism for denying the genocide. But Turkey says that there was no systematic campaign to kill Armenians and that many ...
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The killing of 1.5m Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War I remains one of the bloodiest and most contentious events of the 20th century, and has been called the first modern genocide.
In all, 25 concentration camps were set up in a systematic slaughter aimed at eradicating the Armenian people - classed as “vermin” by the Turks.
Winston Churchill described the massacres as an “administrative holocaust” and noted: “This crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.”
Chillingly, Adolf Hitler used the episode to justify the Nazi murder of six million Jews, saying in 1939: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Internationally, 21 countries have recognised the killings as genocide under the UN 1948 definition
The US Congress should pass a resolution that would formally recognize the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.
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