Speech delivered at Darfur Rally, April 30, 2006 in Washington D.C. before a crowd of 30,000 and televised on CNN

By Rev. Fr. Tateos Abdalian

My Dear Brothers and Sisters:

I stand before you on this day humbled to be one among you who have united in a collective voice of indignation, crying out to the world against the brutality of genocide.

With sorrow, we testify that the spirit of hatred, the pure evil which is the genesis of this crime-against-humanity, does indeed exist in our world today, as it has in the past.

The cruelty that we are witnessing in Dafur-and in other parts of the world - is just the latest step in a long and terrible journey for man that began when one brother somehow found it possible to kill another. The details and theaters of this story have changed in the ensuing centuries, as have its scale and ambition. But the common denominator is this: the continuing fact of man's inhumanity to man.

I am myself the son of a survivor of genocide: the 1915 Genocide of the Armenian people-a genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish government against its own minority community of Armenian Christians. This deliberate horror took 1.5 million lives, and uprooted a people from their ancestral homeland of over 2,000 years.

That terrible episode still casts its shadow over mankind after 91 years. And in a profound sense, even today- maybe especially today- I speak to you from the fringes of that shadow, to express my utter bewilderment that the issues surrounding genocide- its perpetration, its justification, its denial-are still with us.

No individual, or group of individuals, can be blind to the evil it represents.

No government or people can stand before God and commit mass murder in His name, knowing full well that such actions are an abomination to His blessing of life.

No government or people can witness genocide in the world around them, and passively allow it to continue.

And as people who are concerned and indignant over the continuing fact of genocide, we must combat its darkness with weapons of Light-as exemplified by Dr. Martin Luther King, by Mahatma Gandhi, by Mother Theresa, by Nelson Mandela, by Pope John Paul II, by the protesters of Tiananmen Square-and by so many other brave souls throughout the world.

These weapons are within the grasp of each person here-

so long as we have the courage, the resolve, the faith, to uphold that Light, and shine it into the dark places of our world.

I say to you: Do not let the darkness of evildoers overshadow the lamp of love, the resolve to do good, that God has lit in your heart.

Hold His lamp high. Do not be silent. Let your voices be heard by the perpetrators of genocide - those of today and those of past history - so that they may be judged, in this world and hereafter.

Pray that the warmth of that Light will melt the hardened hearts of world leaders and anyone else who has the ability to effectuate positive change.

And above all, never lose faith that, even in the face of darkness and death, God has sent His Light into the world, to guide us all and to give us life.