University of London students reject genocide commemoration motion

PanARMENIAN.Net - Students at a top university in Britain have voted against holding commemoration ceremonies for a number of genocides, including the Nazi Holocaust and the slaughter of around 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, on the grounds that do so would be “Eurocentric.”

According to The Algemeiner, last week, a session of the Student Assembly of Goldsmiths’ College – affiliated with the University of London – was presented with a motion that urged students to recognize “the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, of the other genocides, of totalitarianism and racial hatred” by organizing “commemorative events for students and members of the public on Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27), on the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (August 23), on the Holodomor Genocide Memorial Day Act (4th Saturday in November) and on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (April 24)”

But Education officer Sarah El-alfy implored students to vote against the proposal, rejecting it as “Eurocentric”. El-alfy did not explain how commemorating the Armenian Genocide, carried out by Muslim Turkey – whose current leadership has lobbied actively to prevent official recognition of the genocide in Europe and the United States – could be considered “Eurocentric.” Nor is the Goldsmiths’ Assembly apparently aware that the Nazi Holocaust severely impacted the 415,000 Jews who were residing in North Africa during the period of Nazi rule.

However, one leading London-based Jewish analyst told The Algemeiner that the proposers of the motion may have erred by not including other, more recent genocides as candidates for commemoration, most obviously Rwanda, where around one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were exterminated by Hutu extremists in 1994.