Don’t Turn Your Back!

By Rosario Teixeira

WATERTOWN, Mass.—During the month of April, Peace of Art, Inc. will display Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards on Mount Auburn and Arsenal Streets in Watertown, with the message “Mr. President, Don’t Turn your Back! Recognize the Armenian Genocide.” This year, Peace of Art will display a second message on a digital billboard in Foxboro, Mass., on Route 1 near Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place, with the message “Honoring the Memory of 1.5 million Lives. Recognize the Armenian Genocide.” This simple message is written against an image of Der Zor, covered with 1.5 million lights, one for each life lost. The desert witnessed the remaining Armenians who were forced to their death march by the Ottoman Turks, and became the last resting place for many of the refugees. This digital billboard went up on Easter Monday, April 9, the day of Remembrance of the Dead, Merelots.

During the month of April, Peace of Art, Inc. will display Armenian Genocide commemorative billboards on Mount Auburn and Arsenal Streets in Watertown, with the message "Mr. President, Don't Turn your Back! Recognize the Armenian Genocide."

“Mr. President, Don’t Turn Your Back! Recognize the Armenian Genocide” is a message to President Obama urging him to honor his 2008 campaign promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide. While on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama declared that “The facts are undeniable. An official policy that calls on diplomats to distort the historical facts is an untenable policy… as president I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” However, on April 24, 2010, President Obama used the expression Meds Yeghern, a term used by Armenians to reference the Great Calamity, rather than “genocide,” a term coined by Rafael Lemkin in 1944, and formally adopted by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. The President stated in part “… The Meds Yeghern is a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of the past.”

Daniel Varoujan Hejinian, president of Peace of Art, Inc., said that “It is morally wrong for the president to turn his back on his promise to acknowledge the mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.”

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9 Comments

  1. Great comcept and graphics Watertown/Peace of Art. You’ve got to take it National. When can we expect to receive our shipments of “Recognize” American made Armenian-grown cotton T-shirts in Calfornia?-or do we have to wait until after the elections because you might have to change the backside of that President?

  2. exellent- beautifully designed billboard, if only it could appear in front of the white house and the ambassy of the murderers responsible for the genocide.

  3. Please do not call it Meds Yeghern, we are asking Obama to recognize it for what it is and we are enforcing his play on words, “Meds Yeghern”, by using it in our media. Call it what it is from now on, otherwise the President can justify the use of his words / play on words.

  4. sevag- you are bang on my friend. as an x-art director in ad agencies we know how to play on words. how many people associate the ‘big apple’ with new york city, how many ? everybody !, you go to the other side of the world in some 3rd. world country and you see someone with a t-shirt that says, “i love n.y.” how many people have ever heard of the word tsunamy, (i hope i spelled it correctly). is it the spelling of the word or is it the word itself. it’s the word of course, people might not know what it exactly means, but they heard it a thousand time, it’s permanent, it is now part of their vocabulary, they have now added one more word to their knowledge.
    the same must happen to the word GENOCIDE, our genocide, the armenian genocide.
    thanks again sevag for bringing this to our attention.
    gerard

  5. KUDOS..
    To greater Boston area Armenians!!!
    Hope it extends further *in thought and image in minds of passsersby..
    To further down to NY and on to other [parts…as well..
    best to the planners and executors of this plan!!!

  6. This is good, but in the nation’s capital turkoazeBEYjanis displayed distorting anti-Armenian “Khojaly” posters on metrobuses and in central metro stations. Have we taken note of this? Any counter measure exposing this disinformation?

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