Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Bill in the UK Parliament
c/o The Temple of Peace, Cardiff
07718982732
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Bill in the UK Parliament
We are pleased that the bill by the Member of Parliament Andrew Dismore, who has helped us so much in the past is scheduled to be given a second reading today, (16th October). This is the first time ever that a bill which is potentially destined for a vote has reached so far.
Sixty-three private bills by Members of Parliament are scheduled to be debated today, of which the Armenian Genocide Day bill is down at number five. Even though it came very high in the list, the procedure of Parliament means that usually there is only time to debate two or three such bills and all the other bills will "fall" The fact that so little time is available for parliament to debate such important bills is all the more appalling as ninety years have elapsed since the "Turkish Rule in Armenia" debate in the House of Lords in 1919. Ninety years ago, the government made promises which were subsequently broken, and as if to excuse themselves, the present British government even deny the facts on which the promises were made.(note that Earl Curzon , for the government, even then had little time to stay in the debate. Now, after waiting for ninety years, there is still not enough time to debate the issue.)
Details of the bill are given below:
"Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Bill. Mr. Andrew Dismore, supported by John Austin, Mr. Virendra Sharma, Clive Efford, Ms Karen Buck and Rob Marris, presented a Bill to introduce a national day to learn about and remember the Armenian genocide. "
Parliamentarians will be sent this to remind them of the government's past promises to the Armenians,containing their recognition of Turkey's central involvement in the Genocide
TURKISH RULE IN ARMENIA.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY rose to call attention to the sufferings of the Christian refugees, Armenian, Nestorian, and Chaldæan, who are still prevented from returning to their homes by the Turkish troops who are occupying the districts from which they were driven, and to the repeated declarations made by the Government that all Turkish rule should cease in Armenia and the other districts referred to; and to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can give any information as to the steps taken or proposed in relation thereto.
The Blue Book.
"The appalling stories of wholesale massacre, of expulsion of great populations from their homes under conditions which could only be described as in most cases slowly dragged-out massacre, are set before us in incident after incident, showing what has happened on a scale so vast as is scarcely credible in our own time or, indeed, in any time. Every one who studies the subject at once begins to ask himself: Are the outrages which are here described the misdeeds of lawless ruffians who are out of hand and incapable of knowing what mercy or humanity means, or can they be the deliberate acts of a Government itself? On that question very large issues would necessarily turn. Unhappily the Blue-book leaves the impartial reader in no doubt whatever as to the answer which must be given. The book is no mere string of incidents. It gives the coherent story of these years, introduced and supplemented by narratives of the past and summaries of what has happened in the present which enable us by the lucidity, the range, and the clear arrangement of the whole, to deal with that question without hesitation and to arrive at the conclusion which is, I think, inevitable. No one reading it carefully but must be convinced, not, I will say, of the Turkish Government's complicity in these matters, but of its authorship, the actual authorship of these unspeakable outrages.
At the very outset of the war a deliberate plan was adopted, it is perfectly clear, by the Turkish Government for dealing with these long oppressed peoples, peoples in their various groups whose courage, whose loyalty to their Christian faith and, in some cases, whose industry aid grit had enabled them to hold their own for centuries and centuries in face of oppression, and poverty, anti misrule. The Government decided upon a cold-blooded plan of a double character. It was first to be a plan of quite deliberate massacre on a large scale, and it was next to be a plan of so-called deportation from the occupied regions which, in very many cases, merely meant massacre in a deferred degree.
Different regions were taken in order. The records which are here brought to light show that there were telegrams at the same time sent to the various parts of the Empire so that the massacre, if it was to be a massacre, should take place at the same time in different places. The deportations were carefully arranged by a plan which makes it utterly impossible to suppose that they were the acts of local governors, or local authorities, or that they emanated from any other source than headquarters, whether or no those headquarters had an identity different from that which belonged to the Turkish Government.
What took place is described in this book by eye-witnesses. Narrative after narrative gives it in detail. These are not for the most part the accounts of victims who had survived; they are narratives by calm, competent, highly-skilled observers, familiar with the country, familiar with the people, and incapable of misrepresenting what they saw. Americans, Germans—I will note Germans very markedly—and English observers as well. These all support, with practical unanimity, the stories given by those victims who had survived, whose records, had they not been thus supported, might very unfairly have been judged as not likely to be correctly or temperately given.
I believe that the story of these years is really an outrage on civilisation without historical parallel in the world. I do not believe that in the wildest barbarities recorded in history, including those of the days of Tamerlane, you would be able to exceed, if you could parallel, the accounts that are here given. And these can be, as I have said, undoubtedly traced, not to the outrageous conduct of undisciplined hordes, but to the deliberate plan and scheme of a Government with which you are supposed to have been on friendly terms and in alliance for many purposes. After all the distractions which the war has brought into the mind of men all over the world in contemplating contemporary history, is it conceivable that we are going to allow these facts to be forgotten; or, if we do not allow them to be forgotten, that we are going to allow conditions to arise again during which their repetition can be possible? That seems to me to be a question which ought to be, and must be, asked at once. ..
It is, of course, difficult to know how to deal with the question and that is a matter which is not within my province or within my power to handle in any way at all. No one contends that it is a very easy matter to know what ought to happen next, and hardly any one contends that we should suppress the Turk in Asia Minor proper; that is in the peninsula west of a line running from Samsoon in the north to Alexandretta in the south. West of that line we admit that Asia Minor is a region under Turkish rule, and presumably it is to continue to prevail with whatever checks or supervision are practicable. No one suggests that they should be suppressed in this region. But east of that line the whole conditions are entirely different. That region has never historically belonged properly to Turkey; is not inhabited by the Turkish races, nor are the Turks as numerous there, as are other races. .........
It has been definitely promised that whatever flag it is which flies over these regions in the future the actual control must never again be in Turkish hands. I will not trouble your Lordships with quotations but I will give two from the Prime Minister himself. Speaking in December 20, 1917, in the House of Commons the Prime Minister said this— What will happen to Mesopotamia must be left to the Peace Congress when it meets; but there is one thing that will never happen; it will never be restored to the blasting tyranny of the Turk. At best he was a trustee of this far famed land on behalf of Ah! what a trustee! He has been false to his trust, and his trusteeship must be given over to more competent and more equitable hands chosen by the Congress which will settle the affairs of the world. That same observation applies to Armenia, the land soaked with blood of innocents massacred by the people who were bound to protect them.
Speaking a little later the Prime Minister said— Outside Europe we believe the same principles should be applied. While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the home lands of the Turkish race with its capital at Constantinople—the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea being internationalised and neutralised—Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine are, in our judgment, entitled to a recognition of their separate national conditions. What the exact form of that recognition in each particular case should be need not be here discussed, beyond stating that it would be impossible to restore to their former sovereignty the territories to which I have just referred.
I ask now, What are we to understand as to their fulfillment? I do not believe I appeal to an unsympathetic tribunal. I apologise for having detained your Lordships so long but the point raised in the question had to be made clear; it is one which deserves attention and must not pass from the memory of civilised people. It is a matter of vital import to the honour of humanity and the good faith and well-being of the world."
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON) (for the government)
My Lords, I do not want to stand between the House and my noble friend Lord Bryce, but, I have an engagement which compels me to go away presently. No one will dispute the extreme gravity or the poignant tragedy of many of the incidents which the moat rev. Primate has placed before us. He has recapitulated from the Blue-book many of the most terrible incidents in the long career of bloodshed, atrocity, and crime which has disfigured what I hope will be the dying days of the Turkish Empire in those parts of Asia to which he had alluded. . .....
... as regards the Assyrians who lived before and who are willing to live again in the areas which belong to the old Turkish Empire, either to place them in an enclave adjacent to the territories under our control, so that they may be under our wing and within easy reach of our protection, or, if we provide a home for them in their former home lands or further afield among the Kurdish peoples, to try to make such arrangements for them as may secure their safe and decent existence.
The most Rev. Primate alluded to the different declarations that have been made at various times since we went into the country by responsible spokesmen of His Majesty's Government. He quoted in particular two declarations made in the course of last year or the year before by the Prime Minister. By those declarations we stand. They have never been departed from there. They do not express the sentiments, the aspirations, or the intentions of ourselves alone. They are shared by all our Allies. And, my Lords I hope that many months—I may even go further and say that I hope that many weeks—will not now elapse before the Allied Powers in Conference are able seriously to come to a solution of the Turkish problem, too long delayed already, and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
..... They (the Armenian refugees) cannot return until something is done to check the Turkish bands which are still ravishing the country. There are, I am informed, no regular Turkish forces now in Armenia proper, that is to say, in Armenia to the east of the Taurus Mountains, nor in Cilicia, but there are wandering bands—the remnants of the former Turkish forces—and all the bad characters who always come to front where a country is in complete disorder, and these are so numerous and so well armed that it would be unsafe for the refugees at present to return.
I believe that by that means, by means of the exercise of diplomatic pressure, by sending a force into the country, which need not be a very large force, to see that these bands are suppressed, it will be possible to enable the refugees to return in safety.
That brings me to say a word about the Treaty itself. The first condition of any Treaty to be made with the Turks is that they shall entirely evacuate what is known as Armenia. I share the view which was expressed by the most rev. Primate that there is no reason why a Turkish Sultan should not continue to reign in those parts of Asia Minor where there is a majority of the Muslim population. The Muslim population is in the large majority along the north coast of Asia Minor, and through most parts of the central plateau, and there a Sultan may remain, and if anybody likes—if he can obtain recognition from the Mohammedan world as Caliph—he may remain as Caliph also. But what I believe the public of this country will insist upon, and in fact, what public opinion must insist upon when it knows the facts and realises those facts upon which the most rev. Primate dwelt—the immense scale and the circumstances of horror which attended these massacres and which have shown once again how utterly unfit the Turk is to exercise powers over persons of a different faith and race—is that there shall be no more Turkish rule in Armenia nor in those other regions, Chaldæan and Assyrian, in which the massacres have been perpetrated.
Some other declarations—those made by the present Prime Minister—have been referred to by the most rev. Primate. I could if it were necessary give other declarations—declarations made by Mr. Balfour on behalf of the Government, declarations made by Lord Robert Cecil on behalf of the Government., declarations made by M. Clemenceau who also pledged France to secure liberation of the Armenians. And therefore I am very glad to know that the noble Earl, in the words which he spoke just now, declared that His Majesty's Government—and he said he spoke for the Allies also—stand by those declarations, and intend to fulfill them. I am sure the House will note with satisfaction that declaration, and will feel sure that His Majesty's Government will carry it out. But I want to press this point upon it, that must be taken to mean the regions in which the Muslim population is not in a large majority, such as the centre of Asia Minor, and that the declaration must be taken to include all the countries to the east of the Taurus Mountains, Cilicia, and the six vilayets of Armenia, and that it is not only for the Republic at Erivan that independence is to be promised, but that independence is to belong to all the regions which historically belong to the Armenian part of Western Asia.
I need only remind your Lordships that if you desire to have any other view of the conduct of the Turks and the character of those massacres in addition to that which the Blue-book presents, to which the most rev. Primate has referred, you will find it in the book of Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador at Constantinople during the period of the massacres. He tells us himself that he constantly went to Enver and Talaat, who are the two chiefs of the Committee of Union and Progress and the persons chiefly responsible for planning and carrying out the massacres. He represented to them that the world would be outraged if those things continued, and he tried for the same purpose to enlist the sympathy of the German Ambassador, Wangenheim. He describes there how Talaat and Enver did not attempt to conceal the massacres, did not deny what their policy of extermination was. They did it all with a deliberate purpose; they were supported by the other members of the Committee of Union and Progress, and not a word was said amongst the Turks against these massacres.
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