Letters on the Armenian Genocide

Letter to the Guardian

Free Speech and the Armenian Genocide

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Marcel Berlins (Writ large: Genocide vote is an ignorant stunt, 9 March), in

criticising the US foreign relations committee vote to recognise the Armenian

genocide, says the word and its definition were crafted by Raphael Lemkin

in 1944: in fact Lemkin began his campaign to criminalise the murderous

repression of racial and religious groups much earlier, in 1933, always by

reference to the Ottoman slaughter of the Armenians which he regarded,

until the Holocaust, as the clearest and most recent historical example of

genocide.

Marcel fails to provide readers with a full statement of the convention

definition, which includes "deliberately inflicting on the (racial or religious)

group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in

whole or in part" – a precise description of the conditions deliberately

inflicted on the Armenian deportees, who in consequence were starved

or killed in their hundreds of thousands. He begins his column by admitting

that he "does not know enough" to decide whether the US decision was

right, but goes on illogically to assert that it is "open to debate". No serious

genocide scholar doubts it, and nor did the Human Rights Commission's

special rapporteur on genocide (Ben Whittaker) in his 1985 report. My own

opinion, published last year, may be found at www.geoffreyrobertson.com.

"What business is it of theirs?" asks Mr Berlins of the US congressional

committee. At a time when Turkish writers are prosecuted under section

301 of the penal code for alleging the Armenian genocide, its recognition

might be thought to be the business of all who care for freedom of speech.

Moreover, as Judge Balthazar Garzón declared when opening investigation

into Franco's mass murder during the Spanish civil war, perpetrators of

crimes against humanity should not have posthumous impunity. The same

might be said of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.

Geoffrey Robertson QC
London

(this QC was retained by the Armenian Legal Initiative Group to write the

legal opinion "Was there an Armenian Genocide" that can be accessed

from the above internet address. This document has been distributed

widely to MPs, MEPs, peers, Welsh Assembly members, libraries, academics,

legal experts, university departments, NGOs in the UK, US, Australia and

Armenia.)

The Guardian
US genocide resolution is an ignorant stunt
Marcel Berlins
8 March 2010
Definitions of genocide are difficult but one thing is clear: the US Congress

has no business ruling on the Armenian

So the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives has

passed a resolution (by 23 votes to 22) that the Turkish killings of Armenians

in 1915 amounted to genocide. What business is it of theirs? I'm not judging

whether their decision was right; I don't know enough to do that. My concern

is that such ham-fisted intervention, and the publicity it received, demeans a

crime which should be treated as the worst in the annals of human behaviour,

and turns it into a political event played out by largely ignorant legislators

responding to a campaign by a well-funded political

Thankfully, their presumptuous decision will not find its way into the statute

book. President Obama doesn't want it to, just as an identical decision by

the House of Representatives in 2007 did not become law because

President Bush didn't find it politically expedient.

The word genocide and its original definition were crafted by Raphael

Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, in 1944. In 1948 the UN adopted the convention

for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which defines

it as "acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,

ethnical, racial or religious group". (The defendants in the main Nuremberg

trials in 1946 were not charged with genocide as such but a statement

outlining their alleged war crimes accuses them of "deliberate systematic

genocide – viz, the extermination of racial and national groups – against

the civilian populations of certain occupied territories, in order to destroy

particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious

groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others".)

The 1948 UN definition has come under critical scrutiny (for instance, can

you intend to destroy "in part"?) with many experts offering different versions.

But the gist remains the same.

Recent atrocities in Darfur have added further confusion. Last month an

appeal committee of the international criminal court (ICC) in the Hague r

ecommended the court consider indicting Sudan's president, Omar

Al-Bashir, on a charge of genocide; this overturned a previous ruling by

another arm of the ICC.

It seems to me, following the generally agreed ingredients of most

definitions, there were two clear cases of genocide last century – the

Holocaust and the Rwandan massacre. Whether or not the Ottoman

empire in 1915 was guilty is more open to debate. It's not a question

of the numbers who died, or in what appalling circumstances. What

matters is the intention to exterminate, and a systematic attempt to do

so. I am equally uncertain about Darfur and Srebrenica. There are many

words for the horrifying conduct of some leaders and their troops, but

genocide may not be one of them.

What I am sure of is the decision to use that solemn word should be a

matter for courts, helped by witnesses and historians, and not for

politicians.

Letter to Baroness Ludford MEP

11 March 2010

Dear Lady Ludford

We refer to your 8 March statement that included the following paragraphs:

“That there were deportations which entailed atrocities and deaths of many
Christian Armenians is not in doubt. But the precise actions, the 1915 war
context, and the extent of reciprocal killings of Muslim Turks all need to be
better understood."

"The term genocide has a very narrow meaning under the 1948 Convention:
the deliberate intent to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.
It is deeply irresponsible to use that term without establishing the full facts
about the Armenian case and to leave the suspicion that politics or even
religious prejudice is a motive. That is why as an MEP I have always refused

to define the events of 1915 and preferred to await the conclusion of honest

and objective research. That is not a cop-out, it is acting with integrity."

Would you kindly read the enclosed legal opinion by an eminent jurist, and

expert in the field of crimes against humanity, to obtain the information you

seek on the Armenian Genocide.

This adds a robust legal dimension to the in-depth historical research by so

many independent historians over decades that have come to the same

conclusion. The International Association of Genocide Scholars have more

than once written to the Turkish Prime Minister pointing out the futility of his

government’s stance on this matter. Perhaps you could also communicate

with this association of the leading historians to find out that the honest and

objective research you look to is already available.

We hope that your connections with the Turkey will not preclude you to

exercise an open mind and the honesty to change your views.

Yours faithfully
On behalf of the Armenian Legal Initiative Group

The Economist

Past Imperfect, Present Tense

5 March 2010

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