HR 221: Letter to the Chair from Edward Papelian - Armenian Genocide

 

Remembrance and justice requires support. It is the support of the deported and en mass murdered of Armenians by Turkey that we need to speak of here and now. Turkey's chronic inability to face the truth about the fact of Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) is cutting the Turkish people off from the rest of the world.

 

As a European of Armenia origin I am writing to you because:

 

- For 96 years in February 1914 . five months before the start of WWI German/Preussen General Rudiger von der Golt (Goltz Pascha) openly defended/recommended in the presence of the Turkish ambassador and high ranking Turkish military officials in his open speech in Berlin, the "force removal" of Armenians from their historic homeland - at that time Armenians in Ottoman Turkey (in 6 Armenian vilayets) were hopping for reform, while Young Turkish Regime was making in reality plans for "A Turkey only for Turks". The fact on the ground above all in East Turkey speaks for itself!

 

- 95 Years after the start of force deportation of Armenians from Ottoman Turkey while using different pre-texts to Syrian Desert. A force deportation which was nothing but the start of systematic and planned annihilation of Armenians by Young Turkish government of Ottoman Empire.

 

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has so far - by setting different excuses' refused to date to recognize the Armenian Genocide and condom the aggressive denial policy of Turkish government ' the legal successor of Ottoman Empire!

 

Denial of genocide is nothing but a second killing. The current orchestrated denial campaign of the Turkish government is just as systematic, coordinated and criminal as the genocide carried out in 1915.

 

Genocide without simultaneous denial is unthinkable - yes, even impossible. The first thing that must be done is to consider what the perpetrators want to attain through denial. Denial is not just the simpl<" negation of an act; it is much more the consequent continuation of the very act itself. Genocide should not only physically destroy a community; it should likewise dictate the prerogative of interpretation in regard to history, culture, territory and memory. As if Armenian nation never existed!

 

UN Genocide Convention 1948 : Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term "genocide" during the 1940s and was the father of the UN Convention of Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was fully aware of the 1915 genocide of Armenian people and the failure of the international community to intervene. His revision of the definition was adopted in the UN Convention which reads as follows:

 

Article 2) In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

 

- Killing members of the group;

- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 

Furthermore, it is established that the present-day UN Convention from 1948 is not a new legislation, but merely a ratification of existing international laws on "crimes against humanity" which were stated in the Sevres Treaty, Article 230 (1920). Even more important is the fact that the UN Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted on November 26, 1968, in power since November 11, 1970, which ratifies its retroactive an non-prescriptive nature. Of this very reason, both mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turkish Regime and the Jewish Holocaust are cases of genocide in accordance to the UN Convention, in spite the fact that both occurred before the Convention was established.

 

During the history of UN two larger studies/reports have been conducted on the crime of genocide. The first was the so-called Ruhashyankiko Report, from 1978, and the second was the Whitaker Report, conducted by Benjamin Whitaker in 1985 (Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Thirty-eighth session, Item 4 of the provisional agenda, E/CN.4/Sub.211985/6).

 

The 1915 genocide is mentioned in several places in as an example of committed genocides during the 20th century. The report was voted on in the Subcommittee of the UN Committee for Human Rights with the voices 14 against 1 (4 abstentions) in August, 1985. On June 18, 1987, the European Parliament officially recognized the Armenian genocide.

 

The world learned about the Jewish Holocaust thanks to the Nuremberg trials and thousands of surviving witnesses. In 1919 the Young Turks were brought to an analogous trial too. Talaat (main responsible authority for Armenian Genocide), Enver and Cemal were sentenced to death for embroiling the Empire in war and killing almost all the Armenian population of six Armenian vilayets (Today, East Turkey). The verdict was executed by Armenian avengers, who called the operation of assassinating the butchers "Nemesis".

 

Genocide will remain genocide. It is the mentality of the Turkish politicians as well as the ignorance of genocide deniers which has to be changed, not the facts on Armenian Genocide. What was happened was and remains genocide. It is The Armenian Genocide. Politics does not follow moral or ethical standards. For deniers of the Armenian Genocide, it's always a "bad time" to recognize the fact of Armenian genocide! If the world had stood against the Armenian genocide, it might have been saved the Jewish genocide in the 1940s which claimed over six million lives. The Germans had simply copied the Turks. United Kingdom should stand for truth and justice and against Turkey's fury and denial policy . simply by recognizing the Armenian Genocide!

 

15 March 2010