PROF. DADRIAN LECTURES ON LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN SOUTH AMERICA
AZG Armenian Daily
10/01/2008
National Interests
There has been significant activity regarding Armenian Genocide
recognition in South America lately. This has involved governmental
agencies, human rights organizations, parliamentarians, journalists,
lawyers and university students.
As late as November 19, 2007, deputies from Argentina,
Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay-all members of the South American
Parliamentarians’ coalition known as MERCOSUR-adopted a resolution
recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide at a meeting
held in Montevideo. MERCOSUR, established in 1986, is the largest
intergovernmental organisation in South America. The Senate of Chile
also recognized and condemned the Armenian Genocide in June, 2007.
In this vein, a major international conference, "The Armenian
Genocide: History and Present Day," was held in Montevideo at the same
time. Organized by the Uruguay Armenia Cultural Association (ASCUA),
the Political Science Institute (UDELAR), and the Human Rights
Program (CLAEH), the conference was co-sponsored by the University
of Montevideo, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry
of Tourism, the Press Association of Uruguay, the Municipality of
Montevideo, Amnesty International-Uruguay Section, and the Embassy of
the Republic of Armenia. Zoryan participated by sending its Director
of Genocide Research, Prof. Vahakan N. Dadrian to speak at this and
another conference in Buenos Aires.
Similarly, another conference was organized in Buenos Aires by
the Luisa Hairabedian Foundation, which is a group dedicated to the
preservation of universal human rights, with a special interest in the
Armenian Genocide. The three Masters of Ceremonies were all alumni of
the university program run by the International Institute for Genocide
and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute),
held annually in Toronto in partnership with the University of
Minnesota. This event was attended by university and middle school
students, lawyers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and a
large number of members of the Armenian community in Argentina.
Owing to the interest in the Armenian Genocide, and particularly
its legal aspects, Prof. Vahakn N. Dadrian, Director of Research
at the Zoryan Institute, shed light on these subjects. His work
was particularly interesting to The Luisa Hairabedian Foundation,
which is currently engaged in a unique legal procedure in Argentine
law regarding a "truth trial" on the Armenian Genocide. Instituted
as a method to uncover the truth about the human rights abuses of
Argentina’s recent past, especially the "Forced Disappearances," truth
trials do not require the prosecution of a defendant. The Federal
Court has accepted the case and sanctioned the initiation of legal
proceedings. The lawyers involved are assembling materials, including
a mass of authentic and verifiable official documents, for which they
are receiving assistance from Prof. Dadrian and the Zoryan Institute.
Prof. Dadrian’s presentation in Montevideo was on the conflict between
the near-universal recognition of the Armenian Genocide and its
persistent denial by past and present Turkish officials. His analysis,
summarised below, suggests that Turkish denial will not cease because
of foreign pressure on the Turkish government, but rather only by
pressure from the Turkish population itself, who, as part of their
democratic movement, will require the state to recognise its own
falsifications of history and remove its limitations on the freedom
of speech and conscience.
Prof. Dadrian outlined the specific components of the denial syndrome
and explained its underlying motives and reasons. He highlighted the
enormous problems modern Turkey would face should its leaders decide
to recognize the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. At the
very least, any government daring to do so could hardly expect to
survive. The risks for Turkey of recognizing the Armenian Genocide
transcend the economic issues of reparations and land claims.
Given the critical role some of the founders of the modern Republic of
Turkey played in the organization of the Genocide, such revelations
bear directly upon the very genesis of the republic and hence the
issue of the current regime’s integrity. The launching and sustaining
of the blockade against Armenia and the total absence of diplomatic
ties are conditions that accentuate these pitfalls. Under these tense
circumstances, Armenia will remain at grave risk-with or without
Russian protection.
Notwithstanding, the historicity of the Genocide, argued Dr. Dadrian,
is beyond any legitimate dispute.
This fact is attested by the series of criminal trials the post-war
Turkish Military Tribunal instituted in the 1919-21 period. The Key
Indictment that charged the leaders of the Ottoman government, as well
as top young Turk Ittihadist leaders with the crime of a centrally
organized mass murder against the Armenians, incorporates dozens of
secret documents, and many cipher telegrams, ordering the destruction
of the deportee convoys. What is so extraordinary about this line of
legal documentation is the fact that the prosecution and the Chief
Judges of the Military Tribunal employed a two-track procedure to
ensure the validity of the documentation. First, the documents were
carefully examined by competent officials of the Ministries of Justice
and the Interior, who marked their authenticity with a stamp. Second,
before taking the witness stand, the high ranking party officials and
Cabinet Ministers were asked to inspect the documents bearing their
signatures and verify their authenticity. This two-tier procedure of
authentication of key wartime documents served to ensure ironclad
utilization of prima-facie official evidence. This is exactly the
same procedure adopted at Nuremberg, where Nazi criminals were tried
and convicted some two dozen years later.
The rapid ascendancy of the Kemalist insurgent movement in the end
served to jettison, however, the completion of the courts martial
and to even effectively help invalidate many of the verdicts and
sentences renditions. Nevertheless, the massive legal documentation
of the wartime crime of genocide against the Armenian citizens of the
Ottoman Empire is on record and is indelibly ensconced in the serial
Annexes of Takvim-i Vekâyi, the official gazette of the Ottoman
Parliament- despite the resolute effort of Turkish authorities to
collect and remove them from circulation and access.
The next day, Dadrian delivered a public lecture on the topic of "The
Significance of the Ottoman-Turkish Official Documents Dealing with
the Armenian Genocide." The final plenary session featured the Deputy
Foreign Minister of Uruguay who delivered a paper discussing the global
ramification of genocide today, in which she made reference to the
devastating consequences attached to the impunity that characterizes
the present status of the World War I Armenian Genocide.
In Buenos Aires, Dadrian spoke on "The Armenian Genocide and
International Criminal Law." This lecture argued the linkage between
the World War I Armenian Genocide core issue of "crimes against
humanity," which term the Allies for the first time formally and
officially introduced when denouncing that act of genocide, and the
Nuremberg doctrine. This central issue of intent and governmental
complicity was an integral component in the conception and organization
of the crime.
The Argentinean publisher, Imago Mundi, will come out in April with
a Spanish translation of Dadrian’s classic book, The History of
the Armenian Genocide, which is already available in French, Greek,
Italian, and Russian. Prof. Dadrian and Prof. Taner Akcam, renowned
Turkish Sociologist and Historian, are publishing the results of their
collaborative archival research on the only official record of the
military tribunals prosecuting the Armenian Genocide, found in the
Takvim-i Vekâyi, in Turkish. The work contains translation of the
original trial documents and argues many of the points Prof. Dadrian
presented in his South American lectures.
The Zoryan Institute, co-publisher of Genocide Studies and Prevention:
An International Journal and Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational
Studies
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress