A Fresno Armenian asks President Trump: When will the U.S. recognize the Genocide?

Mr. President: With an open mind and patience, I listened to your 2019 State of the Union speech, and at first was speechless. You numerated a chain of accomplishments, among which were some firsts in decades. You presented yourself as a man of law and compassion, a man of resolve, fairness and justice.

Dare I say, I thought, there is a new messiah amongst us.

I am not a bookkeeper of socio-economic progress, but it does not take a professional to see the many inequalities, abuses and undue sufferings in our daily lives.

In the audience, during your speech, were honorees among whom were survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. As a young girl, I remember our labor camp Flaschenhals, near Stuttgart, was targeted to be relocated to a concentration camp. My impressions are still vivid. My sympathy and respect go to all of those who had perished and survived.

Hitler’s madness during World War II resulted in the loss of millions of lives. Soon after, the crime was officially recognized and condemned. Germany took responsibility of retribution. Eventually, a Jewish state and homeland was granted for the homeless people.

Only 25 years earlier, the first genocide of the century took place in historic Armenia by the Turks. Armenians were slaughtered in their own 3,000-year-old homeland. Their treasures and assets were looted. Their centuries-old historic treasures were destroyed, churches and monasteries desecrated. Geographic names were changed to Turkish. Even the biblical Mount Ararat of Noah has become Agri.

This was a calculated whitewash for the unpunished, criminal Ottoman Turks, and a coverup for present-day Turkey’s denialists. For the preoccupied world, exposed to new-tailored rewritten history, it will make way for present and future zealous tyrants, who while quoting Hitler, “Whoever remembers what happened to the Armenians?” have committed and will commit new earth-shaking crimes.

The political mechanism resembles a recycling plant, and politicians, acrobats teetering on tight ropes whose creed is “… and justice for some”, and not “… for all.”

Mr. President, you proudly talked about your heroic and resolute stance with North Korea, which according to you, has possibly changed the course of history.

Yet, Mr. President, you and your predecessors, for years have allowed Turkey to volley ridiculous threats of consequences, and flow of recycled bribed moneys. The powerful USA has been playing a shameful game. Well knowing the truth, the USA is yet, as a moral obligation, to acknowledge the 1915 Genocide. Ironically, Israel, whose people well know the pain of slaughter, but as a yo-yo friend of Turkey, is also silent.

It must be said that in question is not the validity of information, but morality, which is still to be seen.

April is a significant month for the Armenian Christians since 301 AD, in observance of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. It also parallels the observance of April 24, 1915, which is the inception date of the Armenian Genocide. Like Christ was crucified on the cross and later resurrected, Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks, and they too resurrected.

On April 24, 2019, genocide victims will be remembered and survivors, if any, honored, just like you honored the 81-year-old Holocaust survivor during your State of the Union speech.

Come April 24, I hope we will see a new leadership of moral civility, fearlessness, even-handedness, and just spirit from you and your administration.