07 02 2007 - Dear Professor and good friend Ken Coates- In Memory of Hrant Dink

Dear Khatchig ,

Here is the requested Tribute of the BRPF. It would be highly appropriate and necessary to publish it with the note (abridged) I sent to the Chairman Prof Ken Coates. (Such things do not just happen out of the blue). Here it is then for publication in VONS.

Keep well

Khatchatur

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26 January, 2007

Dear Professor and good friend Ken Coates

Just recently a Welsh campaigner Eilian Williams got in touch with me. He was given my name by a couple of Armenian organisations. He asked me whether I could oblige to contribute to the forthcoming Tribute to Hrant Dink at the Commons. Of course I congratulated him for his genuine efforts and promised to do my best. This is the only 'event' I know of as a Memento to Hrant Dink. Strange as it might seem, I haven't met E. Williams, hence I cannot tell you precisely anything about him. No matter. Hrant deserves even such a venture in the 'unknown', as long as nobody will censure my input.

I am well aware that it is much too late for even a gentle request…
Please do not feel obliged in any way, but if by Tuesday morning an email or a note of a tribute by you on behalf of BRPF in memory of Hrant Dink will, by ‘miracle’ reach me, I shall luxuriate in the privilege of reading it at the Commons Tribute!

Yours with all good wishes

Khatchatur

PS The name along with the Chairman Ken Coates, belongs to the Publishing Manager of BRPF, Tony Simpson.

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as requested:


In Memory of Hrant Dink

More than a million Armenians were killed in the genocide of 1915. The Turks seized great tracts of Armenian land that have never been returned. Now, Hrant Dink’s murder in Istanbul serves to remind us of this first holocaust of the Twentieth Century, even as the BBC repeatedly remarked on the “alleged mass killings” of Armenians by Turks, notwithstanding the abundant evidence of that genocide that has been presented over the years.

Bur Mr Dink stood for a different and higher standard of journalism. When we received news of his murder, Ayse Berktay, a Turkish friend of the Russell Foundation who lives in Istanbul, put it this way:

“Our dear friend Hrant Dink, one of the endorsers of the World Tribunal on Iraq, a peace and truth-loving Armenian journalist, founder and editor-in-chief of the journal AGOS, a foremost, courageous and most outspoken voice of the Armenian community in Turkey, was murdered in broad daylight in front of the journal building yesterday. He was a staunch but very human and very convincing defender of brotherhood between peoples and put his life at stake to build such genuine brotherhood because he believed that to be genuine, this brotherhood had to base itself on truth and acknowledgement of the identity and plight of one another, on getting rid of prejudices, on recognising the potential richness of the variety of cultures that exist in our land.”

Hrant Dink will clearly by missed by many people in Turkey as well as Armenia, but we should join them in honouring him ourselves.

As Robert Fisk has pointed out, one of the sobering lessons of the Armenian genocide is that some of those Germans who went on to perpetrate the Nazi genocide of the Jews witnessed first-hand the slaughter of 1915 in eastern Anatolia. It is vital that the whole truth is told about these events, which are still more often denied than one would think possible. That is the best tribute we can pay to Hrant Dink’s memory.

Ken Coates, Tony Simpson
on behalf of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation


29 January 2007

V.V