The Wardman Wire

An excellent post from Mr Eugenides about Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, April 24th.

Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Today is April 24th, and for Armenians around the world it is Genocide Remembrance Day. The date itself commemorates the mass arrests on April 24th 1915 of a large swathe of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders by Ottoman authorities, the vast majority of whom were executed.

Over the following weeks and months, somewhere between 750,000 and one and a half million Armenians died; executed by Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish mercenaries: deported to concentration camps and then sent on forced marches through mountain and desert into what is now Iraq and Syria; buried in mass graves. It is believed that between half and two-thirds of all the Armenians living in Ottoman lands were killed: from a pre-WWI population usually put at between two and two and a half million (figures vary), there are nowadays estimated to be as few as 30,000 native Armenian speakers in modern-day Turkey, though many more assimilated Turks will have Armenian ancestry on one or both sides.

If no one else speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians, then bloggers should. There is a lot more. Make sure you read it all.

Mr Eugenides lists a number of articles, including:

• an account from ourararat.com.
• and a post from Daniel Larison.

Let me add that there is a more temperate than usual post by Zulfi Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, which I wish to acknowledge. It does include the habitual MPAC sideswipe at the British Government and rose-tinted view of Islam, however.

Tags: mr eugenides, armenian genocide remembrance day, young turks, turkey, armenia, massacre, crimes against humanity, holocaust denial

[tags]mr eugenides, armenian genocide remembrance day, young turks, turkey, armenia, massacre, crimes against humanity, holocaust denial[/tags]