Threats of death to an Italian writer
after he wrote a book
about the Armenian holocaust
Lingua / Language: Italiano - English
The Genoese journalist-writer Alberto Rosselli as Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorra
Someone has not liked his historical essay on the holocaust
at the hands of the Turks back in 1915
(Il Giornale (Italy), Sunday, November 23, 2008, p. 56)
Roberto
Saviano is not the only writer to have been threatened with death for having
written a book. Even in Genoa we have a case of this kind. It is true that the
Neapolitan journalist, by its own admission, had not fully evaluated the consequences
of the publication of his book Gomorra. And later, only after it was
discovered at his own expense that the price of success was sacrificing his
own life, escorted 24 hours on 24, with the constant fear of ending up one day
in the gun sights of a Camorra. In Liguria, on the other hand, we have another
writer who, working always in history, never thought to arouse a reaction of
the type Saviano only for having addressed the plight of a people occurred as
long ago as 1915 in that of Turkey: the massacre of one and a half million Armenians
in Anatolia. According to the Convention on the Rights of the United Nations,
the extermination “is considered as the first genocide of the twentieth
century.” And it is precisely on this the facts established by several
historical sources, the Genoese journalist-writer Alberto Rosselli wrote the
book The Armenian Holocaust, published by Solfanelli Editions of Chieti.
The book, 96 pages in small format at a cost of 7.50 euro, will be the testimony
of how the plan to dispose of an entire people, not only was the product of
the policy of the “self-styled progressive party of the Young Turks, but
drew its deep roots of old and never quite sopite contrasts between the majority
Muslim turkish-Kurdish and Armenian Christian minority.”
Rosselli, a good historical chronicler, merely reporting what happened during
those terrible years. He says, for example, that the extermination of Christians
Anatolian has already been recognized by the government of Israel in 1994, the
parliaments Russian, Bulgarian and Cyprus in 1995, the Vatican and the European
Parliament in 2000. Facts, then, and certainly no particular mystery revealed.
Only a thorough and extensive reconstruction of historical events that led Europe
to impose “the recognition of the genocide from Ankara” as a condition
indibile for the integration of Turkey into the EU.
"The book - tells Rosselli - came out in 2007. After some months I began
to receive threatening phone calls at home, both in my concerns, both my wife.
Always different voices saying that we were the bastards, that would have killed
us and so forth. It also followed calls to the same tone messages via e-mail.
It seems that the calls are from abroad, as well as e-mail. The point is that
these gentlemen know perfectly reveal my moves and those of my wife. I know
that even a dog and named. And that can mean only one thing from one year I
monitor closely ".
The situation that has frightened most Rosselli took place Saturday, September
27, that is the day when a Anguillara Sabazia, a pleasant town on Lake Bracciano,
in Lazio, was receiving the Arche International Literary Prize, for his book
The Armenian Holocaust. The year before had won the same award for
the essay On Turkey and Europe. That afternoon, while he was in a hotel
in the area, a voice with a foreign accent called him on the phone room and
once again has threatened to death, covering insults. The last time he received
these threats was Sunday, October 26, on his cellphone while he was traveling
in Palazzo Tursi to participate in the debate organized by Senator Enrico Musso
(PDL) on the project of Mayor Marta Vincenzi to build a mosque in Genoa .
But what he says about both shocking Rosselli's book because its author is threatened
with death by international terrorists? Nothing that has not been found in history.
For example, tells of when, already in the biennium 1894-1896 Ottoman militias,
flanked by Kurdish ones, Rasera 2500 villages to the ground wiping Armenian
people around 300mila men, women, old people and children. Also in 1896 the
Sultan Abdul Hamid ordered what has gone down in history as the “massacre
of Urfa”. The militia forced the sultan 3mila Armenians around terrified
to take refuge in the local cathedral, which then gave the fire, causing the
deaths of all the faithful. Not content, kidnapped also 100 thousand women and
forced an equal number of Christians to convert to Islam. But the real genocide,
says Rosselli, was designed in 1913 when the Central Committee of the Young
Turks' planned genocide through the development of an efficient tool paramilitary,
the Special Organization (OS), coordinated by two doctors, Nazim and Shakir.
In a speech on March 25, 1915, Dr. Nazim, executive secretary of the committee,
said: "The Jemiet (Assembly) decided to save the motherland by the ambitions
of this evil race (Armenians) and to take cargo to erase this stain that obscures
the Ottoman history. The Jemiet, unable to forget all the blows and the old
bitterness, then decided to destroy all the Armenians living in Turkey, left
without even a live, and in this regard was given to the government broad freedom
of action."
The first slaughter occurred on April 24, l915 when 500 representatives of Armenian
Movement were imprisoned and strangled with wire. In a report in 1917 the official
German doctor Hans Stoffels reported to have observed in Mosul (northern Iraq)
entire Armenians villages with thousands of decomposing bodies. "Children
– Stoffels says - previously raped, tortured and sodomizes in more horrible
ways. " Then they invented “the combustion useful”: Armenian
prisoners were thrown alive into the boilers of locomotives to provide additional
energy. The final extermination, always tells Rosselli, occurred in 1922 in
Smyrna, when the new Republican regime of Kemal Ataturk, who continued to deny
the massacre, had killed about 100 thousand civil Greeks and Armenians.
The Armenian Holocaust by Alberto Rosselli, Solfanelli Editions (Chieti, Italy), 96 pages, Euro 7.50.
mailto:lettorespeciale@rinodistefano.com
