According to the Armenian newspaper Yerkir the Brazilian government has decided to create a Museum of Tolerance (Museu de Tolerância) at the USP (Universidade de São Paulo) with sections dedicated to grave crimes against humanity.
Information from the Armenian Foreign Ministry, tells that the US$ 10 million project will be completed at the beginning of 2007.
The museum will present in its rooms religious and ethnic violence including historical facts like massacre of Indians, the Catholic church Inquisition and the Jewish Holocaust, among other genocides. The museum will probably have a section on the Armenian Genocide.
In protest against the likely Armenian section to be included, Ahmet Gürkan, Turkey’s ambassador to Brazil sent a letter to the project director last month, saying that the events occurred during World War I “were painful but cannot be characterized as genocide.”
After that, Armenian Council General Ahsot Yeghiazarian, joined Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s South America Central Committee member Tigran Bokhchalian and professors Hakob Keshishian and Yervand Tamjian, to pay a visit to the project director.
On August 31 they handed him a letter stating that despite the Turkish government’s denial, the Genocide is a proven fact attested by thousands of documents. They expressed hope that the a section on the Armenian Genocide would find a permanent place in the new museum of tolerance.
