ANCA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ARAM HAMPARIAN’S STATEMENT ON THE “PRESIDENTIAL STUDY DIRECTIVE ON MASS ATROCITIES”

August 4, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC – Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Executive Director Aram Hamparian issued the following statement on today’s White House announcement of the “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities”, which aims to create a framework to prevent mass atrocities and genocide.

“Armenian Americans – descendants of the still unpunished genocide that served as the blueprint for so many others that followed – welcome the announcement today of the President’s new initiative to prevent future mass atrocities.”

“Sadly, the President’s words are undermined by his own actions.”

“The Obama Administration, like too many before it, has failed to rightfully regard genocide affirmation and prevention as a moral imperative for government action, and has, instead – in flagrant disregard of our nation’s ratification of the Genocide Convention – reduced our nation’s stand against genocide to a political commodity, to be bartered away or surrendered under foreign threats.”

“Nowhere is this more evident today than in our government’s failure to forcefully confront the brutal attacks directed by Sudan’s genocidal dictator Omar al-Bashir against civilians in the Nuba Mountains and across South Kordofan.”

“We see this failure not only in terms of confronting ongoing genocide, but also in the Obama Administration’s complicity in denial, the last stage of genocide. Just two days before the launch of this effort, the President’s nominee to serve as ambassador to Turkey was sent before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under a strict gag-order – written in Ankara and enforced by our President – not to properly characterize the Armenian Genocide as ‘genocide’. The U.S. ambassador to Armenia nominee was placed in the same untenable position just weeks ago.”

“The sorry spectacle of watching an ambassadorial nominee forced to play verbal gymnastics around the word genocide in order to avoid upsetting the sensitivities of an insecure and intolerant foreign regime, seriously calls into question whether our government has the courage, the vision, or the will to live up to the President’s own assertion today that: ‘preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.’”

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To read the “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities” issued by the White House on August 4th, visit:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/08/04/presidential-study-directive-mass-atrocities.

For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Email / Tel: (202) 775-1918 / (703) 585-8254 cell
Armenian National Committee of America
1711 N Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036
Tel. (202) 775-1918 * Fax. (202) 775-5648 * Email.anca@anca.org