Gary Antourian
Demonstrating “tolerance” toward others is an
essential quality which every person and society should practice, but
tolerance should be extended to people who have the courage to admit
their crimes and repent for them. To demonstrate tolerance to the
Turkish government and its denial machine is disservice not only to the
victims of the Armenian Genocide but also to all victims of genocides.
Various Turkish governments and their denial industries not only did not
recognize their predecessors' crime against the Armenian nation but
instead inflicted upon subsequent generations of Armenians the most
heinous, inhuman, and cruel experience through a farcical denial policy.
By extending tolerance, without atonement and compensation, we set a
precedent and send a message to the perpetrators of Genocide, Holocaust,
and crimes against humanity that if a criminal persists in denying his
crime he can get away with it. As many Genocide scholars have stated,
the last act of genocide is its denial.
