Take Action: Oppose ACR 96 influenced by the ethnic special interests

[Javid Huseynov]

OPPOSE ACR 96 INFLUENCED BY THE ETHNIC SPECIAL INTEREST California Statewide Legislative and Media Campaign    Click to send your Pax Turcica State Capwiz letter in less than a minute http://capwiz.com/paxturcica/issues/alert/?alertid=60958501 Dear Friends,    On January 30, 2012, California State Assemblymen Felipe Fuentes (D-CA), Katcho Achadjian (R-CA), and Mike Gatto (D-CA) introduced an Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 96 calling to designate February 27, 2012 as the so-called “California Day of Remembrance for the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku.” ACR 96 is a dissolute attempt by Armenian-American ethnic interest groups to efface the remembrance of the Khojaly Massacre, a largest massacre of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the 20th anniversary of which will be marked on the day before - February 26, 2012.   If California Assembly seeks to remember the victims of an international conflict, no preferences should be given to one ethnicity over another. ACR 96 clearly fails to do that, instead trying to desecrate the memory of the victims under the influence of one ethnic special interest group. Join the Pax Turcica action campaign to urge your California state legislators and media to oppose and denounce ACR 96.   Please, make sure to select your state representative and up to 5 media outlets,  and do not forget to forward the responses to inst...@paxturcica.org Click to send your Pax Turcica Capwiz letter in less than a minute http://capwiz.com/paxturcica/issues/alert/?alertid=60958501      ________________________________________________________ FULL TEXT OF THE STATEWIDE ACTION LETTER On January 30, 2012, Assemblymen Felipe Fuentes (D-CA), Katcho Achadjian (R-CA) and Mike Gatto (D-CA) introduced the Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 96 calling to designate February 27, 2012 as a “California Day of Remembrance for the massacres of Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku.”   ACR 96 seeks to force California legislature into assuming a one-sided position in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Specifically, ACR 96 is a dissolute attempt by Armenian-American ethnic interest groups to efface the remembrance of the Khojaly Massacre, the 20th anniversary of which will be marked on the day before - February 26, 2012. Human Rights Watch called this 1992 massacre carried out by Armenian forces against 613 Azerbaijani civilians, including 106 women and 63 children, as the largest mass killing in the course of the conflict. While both Azerbaijani and Armenian perpetrators of Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku riots, incorrectly designated by ACR 96 as massacres, were caught, tried and sentenced by the court of law, the executors of 1992 Khojaly Massacre were never brought to justice.   Furthermore, ACR 96 refers to the so-called “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”, an unrecognized client regime established by Armenia after ethnic cleansing on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. During the 1991-94 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Armenian forces occupied one-fifth of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh, and forcefully displaced over 800,000 Azerbaijani civilians from their homes. Consequently, the U.S. Department of State does not recognize an entity that ACR 96 calls the “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”. Moreover, four resolutions of the UN Security Council, of which the U.S. is a permanent member, call for an immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. Hence, the wording of ACR 96 contradicts the official U.S. policy as formulated by the federal government.   ACR 96 severely distorts the historical facts. Unlike claimed in its text, the Nagorno-Karabakh region was never “severed from Armenia and forced under Soviet Azerbaijan”. According to a renowned Armenian historian, Richard G. Hovanissian of UCLA, in 1919, a year before the Soviet occupation of the Caucasus, the government of Armenian Republic acknowledged the sovereignty of Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, as did the Allied Powers and the region’s ethnic Armenian inhabitants. After the occupation, Soviets established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region within Azerbaijan in 1923, while simultaneously carving out and granting other parts of Azerbaijan to Armenia. If California Assembly seeks to remember the victims of an international conflict, no preferences should be given to one ethnicity over another. ACR 96 clearly fails to do that, instead trying to desecrate the memory of victims under the influence of one ethnic special interest group. Therefore, I join members of Azerbaijani-American Council (AAC) and the Pax Turcica Institute (PTI) to urge your opposition and denunciation of ACR 96.