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German MP asks Bundestag to recognize the Armenian Genocide
BERLIN, REICHSTAG
Eighty-five years ago, in 1916, Karl Liebknecht, confronted the German Parliament with the issue of the Armenian Genocide. For the first time since then, Mr. Uwe Hiksch, a member of the German Parliament as a deputy of the Party of Democratic Socialism, this week sponsored a resolution calling on Members of the German Parliament to support the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish government in the years from 1915 to 1917 as a historical fact. The resolution comes on the heel of a mass petition to recognize the Genocide was given to the German government.
The resolution recognizes German partial responsibility for the Genocide. It asks for a public apology from the German Parliament for the support and conscious toleration of the Genocide by former government officials and officers of the German Empire.
Mr. Hiksch, who is a member of the German-Turkish Friendship organization, strongly supported his appeal arguing that a recognition was needed in order to promote the process of democratization in Turkey, which still reacts hysterically upon the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by foreign Parlaments and prosecutes its own people who remember the Genocide publicly.
In a press conference Mr. Hiksch, Dr. Tessa Hofmann, Dr. Jirayr Kotsharyan and Mr. Ali Ertem presented their common initiative for the recognition of the Genocide in a Press conference. Dr. Hofmann and Dr. Kotsharyan are members of a working group for the recognition of the Armenian Geocide. Ali Ertem is head of the Union of the opponents of Genocide in Frankfurt, a 11,000-strong group with mainly Turkish members who ask Turkey and Germany to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
A large contingent from the Turkish press was present at the event where Mr. Ali Ertem noted that every time Turkey succeeded to hinder a recognition of the Genocide the problem returned to Turkey some time later in a much more massive way. They also heard that the only way to a permanent improvement of the Turkish-Armenian relationships is the recognition of the Genocide because nothing can hinder the understanding of two people more than denial of such a crime.
A German spectator asked Mr. Hiksch whether he was afraid that the radical Turkish Press could call him a traitor which could mean a declaration of death for him. Mr. Hiksch answered that he as a Democrat wouldn't tolerate undemocratical attemts to intimidate him. It has to be noted that every attempt to intimidate the initiators of the appeal would support the appeal by other German Members of Parliaments.
Partial Source of information: Taschjian Law offices in Berlin.
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