Co-Chair of Aurora Prize Selection Committee George Clooney and Co-Founder of the 100LIVES/Aurora Prize Initiative Ruben Vardanyan recorded an interview with Artak Aleksanyan for Armenia TV and A1plus TV on April 22.

The interview was broadcasted on April 23 and Mediamax presents some extracts from it.

On Armenian Genocide and the 100LIVES/Aurora Prize

George Clooney: I’ve been interested in Armenia for a number of reasons. Obviously, there’s always the question of identifying the things like the Armenian Genocide.

But when I met Ruben [Vardanyan], he wanted to talk about finding a version of Armenian history where we could talk about the great things that have happened and looking forward.

And I thought - what a great idea to be able to find people who risked their lives at times, certainly give up virtually everything in their life in the service and help of others, and find a way to celebrate that in the name of Aurora, in the name of looking back in the way.

I thought this is such a perfect way to rather than deal with anger to deal with a form of kindness and generosity and love. I’ve never seen it done that way before, and I was very excited to be involved in it.

On Refugees and the repeating challenges

George Clooney: There has never been a time in the history when refugees haven’t been a difficult subject matter. The reality is that our responsibility is to never let their stories die. It’s very important that we continually talk about the idea that these people aren’t people who just decided to leave Syria.

They’re forced up because they’re being murdered, and their children are being murdered. They’re willing to risk their lives, they know the dangers and they’re trying to leave. That’s how bad it is. My job as public figure and a son of a newsman (my father was a newsman for 45 years) is finding ways, creative ways sometimes to be able to keep this in news and not forget it.

Ruben Vardanyan: Unfortunately, if you look what’s happening now in Syria, you will see it’s the same place and same stories as hundred years ago. You’ll think “Jesus, it’s repeating, some sort of dejavu”. Now Yezidis, Christian minorities are facing the same challenges.

What’s happening? Why didn’t people learn the lesson? Why didn’t the world learn the lesson of what happened a hundred years ago? What about the raped Yezidi women who try to get back into society? What happens to the kids who lost their parents? We’re getting so many questions again and again.

With the Aurora Prize we are trying to check how people in different countries feel responsible, not only being heroes, but how we can become involved and support some of these activities. You can do something, you can support. George is raising his voice about what’s happening and trying to convince people that we can be a part of this process to influence the changes and not just be idle and say “It’s not my problem”.

George Clooney: Long after the Armenian Genocide, once they finally came up with the word “genocide”, which they hadn’t until the World War II, everyone said “Had we known something about it, if we just had known”. And then we had Cambodia, and then we had Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur. We know! And that’s sort of the great travesty. Every time we say “if we’d known we would have done something about it”, we do know, and we can see it happening in real time. It’s what do we do about that? That’s a question that we have to ask all of ourselves.