When the word ‘genocide’ wasn’t introduced into the lexicon, everybody perfectly knew features of the word. Cruelty lies on its ground, and not self-defense, not even the war, but targeted extermination of a whole nation. It happened to the Armenian people 101 years ago, and after that we again and again see it’s repetition in different programs: Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda.
Young people beaten by police. A person’s head cut off. Murders. And not just any killings—brutal massacres, including the deaths of her seven children. She’s seen it all. She has feared for her own life as she became the subject of government harassment and death threats, forcing her to flee her country with nothing but a pair of trousers.
George Clooney has described his own family’s flight from famine as he urged the world to remember that refugees are “people, just like you and me”, during a humanitarian conference in Armenia.
“The Clooney family fled a famine in Ireland to come to the United States where their very survival required a room, a meal, a helping hand. We call them refugees, but they’re just people, like you and me.”
Ms. Barankitse said she planned to donate the $1 million to three organizations that help child refugees and orphans and work to eradicate poverty: the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess Foundation of Luxembourg, the Jean-François Peterbroeck Foundation, and the Bridderlech Deelen Foundation of Luxembourg.
On April 24, 2016, the Armenian community of Canada came together in Ottawa to commemorate the 101 st year of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The commemoration started with speeches at Ottawa’s Parliament Hill near the building of the Canadian Parliament, and continued to the Turkish Embassy, where speakers addressed the Embassy with their demand for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Marguerite Barankitse from Maison Shalom and REMA Hospital in Burundi was named as the inaugural Laureate of the $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. At a ceremony held in Yerevan, Armenia, Barankitse was recognized for the extraordinary impact she has had in saving thousands of lives and caring for orphans and refugees during the years of civil war in Burundi.
Actor George Clooney brands the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces a century ago as “genocide” and says it is ridiculous to deny it. Rough Cut – Subtitled video is available here.
When I met them, it had been nearly a century since the survivors had seen their home. I wanted in some way to reunite them with their homeland. Based on the childhood memories they shared with me, I traveled to Turkey, took an image of what remained and brought it back to them.
Speaking at an international forum on genocide prevention and the refugee crisis held in Armenia, the actor said he had decided to use his fame to focus attention on those “who can’t get any cameras on them at all” after reading about atrocities being committed in the Darfur region in the early 2000s.
