Scholars from “Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide” urge U.S. Congress to recognize Armenian Genocide

Montreal, QC, Canada-A group among the world’s foremost scholars and academics of genocide studies urged the U.S. Congress to recognize the Armenian Genocide through a petition signed and prepared at McGill University during the Global Conference on Genocide Prevention this past week-end.

“The 20^th century has been described as the Century of Genocide. It opened in 1915 with the mass killing of almost 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire,” Payam Akhavan, S.J.D., chair of the symposium, noted in his opening remarks.

The petition, which asks members of the U.S. Congress to approve a vote for H. Resolution 106 calling on the White House administration to recognize the genocide, was signed by the likes of Dr. Akhavam, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Professor Frank Chalk, Director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, and Professor of History, Concordia University, Senator Roméo Dallaire, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, Professor Yehuda Bauer, Holocaust historian and scholar, Yad Vashem and Hebrew University, Dr. Irwin Cotler M.P., Former Minister of Justice & Former Attorney-General of Canada,, Dr. Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, and many others.

“The scholars’ reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide’s historical reality and their commitment to justice once more show how Turkey’s claims that ‘history should be left to the historians’ is a cheap political ruse,” remarked Dr. Girair Basmadjian, president of the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC). “Everybody on that petition, as well as Turkey, know that the true historians have already passed their verdict. We hope the U.S. Congress will now do the same, and thank the symposium’s organizers and participants for their hard work,” he concluded. “I cannot help but feel pride as a Canadian for the moral stance that the Canadian Senate, Parliament and especially the Government have taken in affirming and reaffirming the historical fact of the genocide.”

Funded by the Penny and Gordon Echenberg Family Foundation, The Global Conference on Genocide Prevention at McGill University took place between October 11-13. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS