Trust writes to all Members of Parliament urging support for EDM 357

The following appeal was sent to all Members of Parliament who have not yet signed EDM 357 calling for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Dear Member of Parliament,

"In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor… the clearance of the race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be… There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons… whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust - these were beyond human redress."
Sir Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, Volume 5

"On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens - an unarmed Christian minority. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years. The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey's wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship…"
Professor Robert Melson, President, International Association of Genocide Scholars

"Yet another form of continuing the genocide is by negating its historical reality, as if the 1.5 million Armenians of Anatolia had never existed. Negationism entails a denial of the right to one's identity and the right to one's history. Particularly outrageous is Article 305 of the new Turkish penal code, which criminalizes the expression of the Armenian genocide. Besides being an insult to the memory of the victims of the genocide, it entails a gross violation of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the right to seek and impart information."
Professor Alfred de Zayas, Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva

Please put the record straight - sign EDM 357

" That this House believes that the killing of over a million Armenians in 1915 was an act of genocide; calls upon the UK Government to recognise it as such; and believes that it would be in Turkey's long-term interests to do the same. "