CATHERINE JUN Fourth-year student Lucy
Abajian participates in a candlelight vigil for the
Armenian Genocide.
By Michaele Turnage
Daily Bruin Contributor
Thousands will converge on Hollywood’s “Little
Armenia” district at 11 a.m. today to march in honor of the
86th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, which the Turkish
government still denies ever took place.
“We want recognition for human rights violations
throughout the world,” said Benjamin Charchian, president of
the Armenian Student Association at UCLA, who also acknowledged the
atrocities of the Holocaust and genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.
“Through education we will be able to stop future
perpetration of genocide,” he said.
The Armenian Genocide occurred from 1915-16 when the
“Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire executed
1.5 million Armenians ““ 60 percent of that population.
But members of the Turkish Student Association said the genocide
never happened.
“It wasn’t a genocide, it was just a war,”
said Ersin Sivrican, a ’00 alumnus who earned his
bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering.
Nevertheless, students from 19 Southern California colleges and
universities, who recently formed the United Armenian Students,
organized today’s march to commemorate the lives of genocide
victims and to warn humanity against future crimes.
The march will close down five miles of Hollywood. UAS is
anticipating 50,000 people to join the 1.5-mile march which will
end on the corner of Sunset and Hobart Blvds., where two speakers
will address the crowd.
ASA, a founder of UAS, also held a candlelight vigil Monday
night in Westwood Plaza, which included poetry readings, a skit,
song, dances and videotaped interviews of genocide survivors.
According to the Knights of Vartan Armenian Research Center at
the University of Michigan, Armenians remember the massacre on
April 24 because on that day in 1915, death squads rounded up and
killed 300 Armenian leaders and slaughtered 5,000 others in the
streets and in their homes.
Helen Mardirosian, a fourth-year English and psychology student,
said genocide survivors tell stories of Turkish soldiers slashing
pregnant women’s wombs with knifes, removing the premature
babies on the tip of swords and throwing them for target practice.
The soldiers would then leave the women to die, Charchian
added.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government’s denial of the Armenian
Genocide has left the Armenian Diaspora searching for justice and
peace. Several countries, like France and Israel, have officially
recognized the genocide, but many others, including the United
States and Turkey, have not.
“Armenians are in a state of unrest, we need a sense of
closure,” Charchian said. “I see a cry for
acknowledgement. We need a sense (that) it happened, they
apologized, the world acknowledged it, and we can move on
now.”
When House Resolution 596: The Armenian Genocide Education and
Commemoration Act ““ which would have proclaimed the U.S.
government’s official recognition of the atrocity ““
reached the U.S. House of Representatives last October, members of
ASA wrote letters to Congress and traveled to Washington, D.C. to
voice their support for the proposed legislation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, on Oct. 19, 2000, House
Republican leaders tabled voting for the resolution for a year,
after threats from the Turkish government caused the U.S.
administration to fear for U.S.-Turkish relations.
Working on the march for three months, UAS invited groups like
Greeks and Assyrians, whose ancestors they said were also massacred
in the 1915 genocide.
MEChA and the Jewish Student Union were among UCLA student
groups invited to the march.
“It started in a little room where 36 of us got together
and decided to talk,” Mardirosian said.
The L.A.-area Armenian community, the largest Armenian
population outside of Armenia, helped the UAS’s effort by
placing signs in windows advertising the march, hosting UAS
meetings at their restaurants, businesses and homes, and agreeing
to close businesses to join the march in Hollywood today.
“We have the support and backing of the entire Armenian
American community in the area,” said Harout Semerdjian, a
’00 alumnus who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in
history.
Three hair salons in Westwood, including Sigal Gevojanyan, have
pledged to give all profits earned today to Armenia. In addition,
upon the request of customers from April 25 to May 25, their
proceeds will be donated to Armenia.
Organizers hope the UCLA community will be inspired by the
candlelight vigil and march to stop horrific events in history from
repeating.
“Students are tomorrow’s leaders, tomorrow’s
politicians and tomorrow’s historians,” Semerdjian
said. “It is important that they know the past so that they
can positively influence the future and help heal old
wounds.”