"Who, then, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?"

In 1921, Armenian Soghomon Tehlirian murdered a man to avenge the death of his entire family. That man was Mehmet Talaat, the former minister of the interior for the Ottoman Empire, who was responsible for the deportation and slaughter of over one million Armenians, including Tehlirian’s family, between 1915 and 1918. Citing them as a rebellious and therefore, dangerous group, Talaat ordered the complete extermination of the Armenian people. Almost a century later, Turkey has not come to terms with its terrifying past; the Turkish government continues to deny the Genocide of the Armenians.
In the years following the first World War, a futile attempt was made to bring Turkey to justice, but because of ambiguity regarding state sovereignty, no charges were brought against the regime. Nations were sympathetic but focused their attention on their own domestic issues and the genocide of the Armenians was soon forgotten. Two decades later, Adolf Hitler asked his Wehrmacht commanders, “Wer redet heute von der Vernichtung der Armenier?” (“Who, then, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?”) and used the forgotten genocide as justification for his Final Solution.
The Trial of Soghoman Tehlirian, one of the most important cases in the history of genocide, engendered the need for new legislation for this new crime. Talaat, the man who had been responsible for the deaths of over one million Armenians, was never prosecuted for his crimes against humanity, and yet, Tehlirian was tried (and eventually acquitted) for murder. Raphael Lemkin best captured the irony when he posed the question, “It is a crime for Tehlirian to kill a man, but it is not a crime for his oppressor to kill more than a million men?” This question led Lemkin to become one history’s greatest champions for human rights.
To me, it is simply appalling that even ninety years later, both the United States and Turkey have refused to recognize what happened to the Armenians as genocide. It is essential for Armenians that this tragedy to be recognized so they can heal their wounds and also, for Turkey so they can move forward with their history. As Turkey is considering a bid for the European Union, their human rights record is a major obstruction. It is disturbing that such a crime was ever committed, but the fact that it has been repeated in Nazi Germany, in East Pakistan, in Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Iraq and even today in Darfur, is horrifying. Genocide is the worst of all crimes; it destroys not only the thousands of lives involves but it destroys cultural diversity, an essential part of our world that can never be restored.
Three years ago, I saw a movie in my European history class called “The Forgotten Genocide” and although I didn’t know it at the time, it changed my life. The tragedy of the forgotten genocide inspired me to study human rights and to dedicate my life to genocide prevention. To know that the world paid so little attention during these genocides weakens my faith in humanity and only brings me to question who will stand up for my own (our own) rights if such an atrocity were to occur on our own soil. I refuse to let genocide to continue to be a trend in the twenty-first century.

All quotes are take from "A Problem from Hell" America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

This I Believe

I am going to change the world. For as naïve and pretentious as that sounds, I have the passion and the determination of Raphael Lemkin. I refuse to sit idly by and watch corrupt, egocentric governments do nothing. I will change the world, because I believe our world is in dire need of a change. In the past fifty years, our society has become increasingly materialistic and narcissistic. Gone are the days of the compassionate American spirit. Gone are the days of selfless benefaction. People have become so intensely focused on their own personal advancement, that the terrific plight of so many is cast away without so much as a sympathetic “oh well.” The concept “over there” that was a symbol of American generosity and compassion in the 1940s has taken on a completely new meaning. “Over there” is where people are starving. “Over there” is where violence occurs. Slavery, human trafficking, extreme poverty and genocide only occur “over there.” And because of this mental conception of distance, all of these problems have become easy to ignore and forget. Aside from sporadic mission trips and intermittent donations, our society has become shamefully ignorant and indifferent to the rest of the world. Senator William Proxmire once called indifference and ignorance “the most lethal pair of foes for human rights everywhere in the world” and that statement holds true. We’ve lost sight of the fact that we’re all human beings with wants and desires, dreams and aspirations, talents and abilities. I believe that we as human beings have an innate responsibility to protect and serve our fellow human beings, regardless of ethnicity, spirituality, sexual orientation or geographical location. I believe that it is crucial that the world’s view of humanity and the worth of human life be restored to this most basic truth. I may not be entirely capable of single-handedly accomplishing this feat, but if I can change the views of one person, then, by definition, I will have changed the world.

“The morning news is yours to alter.” –Samantha Power