Leaders Call On PBS To Pull Plug On Armenian Genocide Deniers

Weiner is joined by leaders of New York City’s Armenian community to call on PBS to cancel a controversial discussion program that will feature Armenian deniers of the genocide.

Congressmember Anthony Weiner (D–Queens/Brooklyn) joined by leaders of New York City’s Armenian community called on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to cancel a controversial discussion program that will feature Armenian deniers of the genocide.

During and after World War I, Ottoman Turks murdered 1.5 million Armenian civilians to suppress Armenian support for Russian forces invading their occupied homeland. On April 17, PBS will air a documentary entitled, “The Armenian Genocide”, immediately followed by the presentation of a panel discussion program which features two scholars who deny the massacre ever occurred. Today, Weiner, Congressmember Carolyn Maloney and Armenian leaders urged New York’s flagship PBS station, WNET Channel 13, to cancel the discussion program.

“The Armenian Genocide is a matter of history,” Weiner said. “No one should be given a forum to dishonor its 1.5 million victims. WNET should maintain the integrity of this documentary by pulling the panel discussion.

“Today we stand united in saying loudly and clearly that the unimaginable horror committed on Turkish soil in the aftermath of World War I was, and is, an act of genocide” Maloney said. “Those who would say otherwise are denying the facts: on April 24, 1915, more than 200 of Armenia’s religious, political and intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople and killed. Ultimately, more than 1.5 million Armenians were systematically murdered at the hands of the Young Turks, and more than 500,000 were exiled from their native land. This is the indisputable truth.”

Weiner and Maloney join more than 7,000 people who have signed an online petition asking PBS to drop the panel discussion, making it one of the largest organized protests of a PBS program. PBS has not aired a panel discussion following a documentary in more than five years.