BOSTON — A billboard in Boston’s North End that was paid for by a group that denies the Armenian genocide was placed there “in error” and is being removed, a spokesman for Clear Channel Outdoors said in an email on Thursday, Boston.com reports.
The billboard, which is located just a few blocks from the Armenian Heritage Park, was purchased by a group identified as the Turkic Platform as part of their campaign to deny the 1915-1923 genocide of the Armenian people. It sparked criticism on Wednesday night for its references to genocide-denial.
The purchase of the billboard was timed to coincide with celebrations in April to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, including the ceremony for the annual reconfiguration of the park’s symbolic sculpture and Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur’s Walk Against Genocide (from the Holocaust Memorial to the Armenian Heritage Park), which would have passed the billboard on Sunday, April 10th and the Annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration on Sunday, April 24th which draws hundreds of people from the Armenian community to the park every year.
“Truth = Peace,” the sign says. A hand with the flag of Turkey holds up two fingers in a peace symbol, while hands with the flag of Russia (left) and Armenia (right) have their fingers crossed in the symbol of lying. The text of the billboard directs readers to FactCheckArmenia.com, a website that dismisses the genocide as “propaganda being pushed by a powerful and well-funded Armenian diaspora.”
3 comments
Both my parents (1905-1955) (1910-1988) were survivors of this event which Turkey so STEADFASTLY denies . My father at 11 and his two younger brothers were the last remaining males of their family of 10. Of the three my father never spoke of the event.- it was a nightmare to him! My mothers family , the only grandparents i knew ,were imprisoned on a train carrying hundreds of Armenian families to the Turkish(now Syrian) deserts to perish on the infamous “death marches”. There are thousands of bodies buried there. At a night stopover the box car they were locked in , it was was the very last one. was unshackled and the doors unlocked- twenty Armenian families were spared death including my grandparents, my mother and her sister. For a time they hid out in a Kurdish community which took them in. They escaped to Greece and thence to the U.S
Ed Varjean (born Varjabedian) Sedona AZ
The problem is the US State Department. Since the Genocide and a repositioning of the actors that control the silk trade, this “wonderful” foreign state department agency is willing to blatantly take the entire country on a road that denies REALITY about the mass murder and theft of an entire race, just to appease the murderer..
The US state department, Erdoghan and Netanyaho all must go.