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 BURBANK
— Local members of the Armenian Youth Federation joined their fellow members
across the nation Tuesday in protesting Chevron Corp.’s lobby in Washington,
D.C., against a proposed resolution in the House that would formally recognize
the slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide.
The protests — which took place in Burbank, Glendale La Crescenta and other
cities nationwide — were in response to a Associated Press report in June that
the corporation was secretly lobbying against official U.S. recognition of the
Armenian Genocide.
“Chevron shouldn’t even have a hand in lobbying for issues like this,” said
23-year-old Shunt Jarchafjian, who stood with several others Wednesday in front
of the Chevron gas station at the corner of Glenoaks Boulevard and Olive Avenue
in Burbank.
The June 13 report listed Chevron as one of several major corporations paying
federal lobbyists to work against the passage of House Resolution 252, which
would formally recognize the mass killings in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman
Empire — now modern-day Turkey — as genocide.
Chevron holds a major stake in
a pipeline that runs through Turkey, which refuses to categorize the deaths as
genocide and has strongly fought against any formal recognition or attempt to
call massacres genocide.
“Turkey is afraid,” Jarchafjian said. “If America recognizes the genocide, than
it’s the whole world recognizing the genocide.”
A Chevron spokesman on Wednesday said that the proposed resolution would have
hurt, not helped relations between Turkey and Armenia.
“As a major energy producer in the region, we support the integrity of multiple
energy transportation routes and a diplomatic relationship between Turkey and
Armenia,” Justin Higgs, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. “Stability along
these transportation corridors is essential to the delivery of strategic
resources to global markets.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, who as author of HR 252 has long fought for official U.S.
recognition of the genocide, took Chevron to task for its role in attempting to
block in the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“I don’t think any major American corporation should be lobbying against the
genocide recognition and become complicit in another country’s genocide denial,”
Schiff said. “I don’t think that’s being a good corporate citizen. It’s
certainly putting profits in front of the public interest.”
Schiff said that the recognition of previous genocide is essential in stopping
current atrocities and mass killings, such as those in Darfur.
Wednesday, protesters held a large hand-painted banner with large red block
letters that read, “The Chevron Way: Fueling Genocide Denial.”
They called the company hypocritical for lobbying against the resolution when it
advertises itself as being a moral and humanitarian organization.
“They are falsely advertising,” said 21-year-old Marie Ghanime. “It’s always an
important issue. It’s something that hasn’t been forgotten.”
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