ARMENIA MARKS 'GENOCIDE'

ARMENIANS IN LEBANON MARKED
95TH ANNIVERSARY MASS KILLINGS

BEIRUT (AFP) - Tens of thousands of Lebanese-Armenians took to the streets of Beirut and other hundreds of thousands of people on Saturday marked the 95th anniversary of the mass slaughter of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, just days after Armenia halted a historic reconciliation deal with Turkey. The 1915 murders of hundreds of thousands of Armenians has become an insurmountable obstacle for relations between the two countries. Armenia insists that Turkey recognise the slaughter as genocide. On Saturday Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan laid flowers at a memorial for the victims in the capital Yerevan and thanked those countries which supported “our struggle for justice”. The slaughter and “annihilation of an ancient culture” was a deliberate policy of the Ottoman Turk government, Sargsyan said. Amid tight security, demonstrators including MPs of Armenian origin blocked a main highway leading into Beirut, waving Armenian flags and carrying banners.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, was falling apart. The events are marked every year on April 24, the date in 1915 when Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested more than 200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Turkey fiercely rejects the genocide label, arguing instead that between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops. The dispute has poisoned relations between the two neighbours for decades, and reconciliation efforts launched last year remain frozen. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christians are believed to have fled to Lebanon after the mass killings. Lebanon today hosts the Arab world's largest Armenian community, estimated at around 140,000 people.

Turkey has always denied that those killings constituted genocide. If Turkey could acknowledge the wrongs of their ancestors and apologize for that, people could put aside their mutual hatred. Only by asking forgiveness for such atrocities, the dialogue could be restored between the two countries.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

It is best for our own personal spiritual progress to cultivate forgiveness and to remember the merciful disposition of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Thakura. We should try our best to reform our own character and know that by doing so we can have the most positive effect on those around us. Kindness and spiritual love have the power to change anyone's character over time, because they are the very things all people seek and they represent the direct intervention of God. Karmic punishment sentenced by material nature, although appropriate and just, does not have the same power. Mercy is superior to justice, which must step aside and offer respect when mercy intervenes.

Śrīla Bhakti Vedanta Tripurari Mahārāja :
“Hear and Chant About Krsna”
Śrī Caitanya Sanga - Vol. IV, No. 11 - May 27, 2002.
http://www.swami.org/pages/sanga/