Armenian Americans have joined with free speech and human rights advocates in calling upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to end more than two weeks of official silence regarding the Turkish government's October 28 arrest of long-persecuted publisher Ragip Zarakolu.
"Ragip Zarakolu has - for no reason other than his commitment to freedom of speech - been dragged, once again, to rot in a Turkish prison - without a single word of protest from the U.S. State Department," said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA. "This is a disgrace. The leaders of the Obama Administration – who have, by now, made it painfully clear that they lack the courage to honor their own commitments to speak out honestly about the Armenian Genocide - appear, now, also unwilling to even speak up when those, like Ragip Zarakolu, demonstrate the audacity to stand up for the truth in the face of threats of prosecution and persecution."
The letter notes the State Department's "shameful, century-long record of appeasing the most intolerant elements of Turkish society - as so painfully illustrated for all the world to see by the gag-rule that our nation's leaders have allowed Ankara to impose on American recognition of the Armenian Genocide."
It also forcefully condemns the State Department's "tacit support for the Turkish government's long-standing prosecution and persecution of the small but growing number of voices within Turkey who, at the risk of their own lives and freedom, seek to bring about fundamental change to a system founded upon genocide, and reliant upon the threat and use of force, both at home and abroad."
The ANCA WebMail letter closes with a chilling reminder about how "the State Department maintained a similar silence regarding the Turkish government's prosecution and public demonization of Hrant Dink, the late Armenian journalist, until, of course, after he was killed in cold-blood on the streets of Istanbul in January of 2007. Let us hope and pray that a similar fate is not visited upon Mr. Zarakolu. This time to speak is now."
