THE ENTIRE SPEECH BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS: GENOCIDE RECOGNITION AND A QUEST FOR JUSTICE
By Harut Sassounian
AZG Armenian Daily
16/05/2009
Armenian Genocide
I would like to discuss with you today why Armenians actually seek
justice, rather than symbolic recognition, for the Genocide committed
against them by Ottoman Turkey.
In the immediate aftermath of the Genocide, most of the wretched
survivors were scattered throughout the Middle East. They had no food,
no shelter, and barely the clothes on their back!
The first generation of survivors firmly believed that their nightmare
would soon be over and they would be able to return to their ancestral
homeland in Western Armenia from which they were so brutally uprooted.
Alas! It was not to be!
They vainly hoped to be rescued by European Christian nations.
On August 10, 1920, the Treaty of Sevres was signed by more than a
dozen countries, including the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan,
Turkey and Armenia.
These countries, large and small, committed to restore justice to
the long-suffering Armenian nation.
This treaty recognized Armenia’s independence and asked Pres. Woodrow
Wilson to fix the borders between Armenia and Turkey.
Unfortunately, the Treaty of Sevres was never ratified; The European
powers abandoned their "Little Ally." The newly-established Republic
of Armenia lasted only for two years, before being swallowed up by
the Soviet Union and Turkey.
The destitute refugees, abandoned to their tragic fate, were forced
to settle down in permanent exile. In those early years, their first
priority was survival, fending off starvation and disease. Gradually,
they rebuilt their lives in new homes, churches, and schools.
Engaging in lobbying activities or making political demands was the
last thing on their minds.
Every April 24, the survivors commemorated the start of the Armenian
Genocide by gathering in church halls and offering prayers for the
souls of the 1.5 million victims of what was then known as "Meds
Yeghern" or Great Calamity.
Two weeks ago, Pres. Obama, for reasons of political expediency,
resuscitated that old Armenian term in his April 24 statement, even
though, for the past 60 years, ever since Raphael Lemkin coined the
word "genocide," Armenians have referred to those mass killings as
"tseghasbanoutyoun" which means genocide.
The succeeding generation, particularly after 1965, the 50th
anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, tried to break the wall of
silence surrounding the greatest tragedy that befell their nation.
Tens of thousands of Armenians in communities throughout the world
held protest marches, wrote letters to government officials and
petitioned international organizations.
The Turkish government, along with the rest of the world, initially
turned a deaf ear to Armenian pleas for recognition of the
long-forgotten genocide.
But, as media outlets, world leaders, parliaments of various countries
and international organizations began acknowledging the Armenian
Genocide, Turkish leaders — astonished that the crimes perpetrated
by their forefathers were making headlines so many decades after the
fact — began pumping major resources into their campaign of denial,
funding foreign scholars to distort the historical facts, engaging
the services of powerful lobbying firms, and applying political and
economic pressure on countries acknowledging the Genocide.
Since 1965, legislatures of more than 20 countries, including Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Greece, Russia, Poland,
Argentina, and Uruguay, have recognized the Armenian Genocide.
Even though, it is commonly assumed that the United States has not
acknowledged the Armenian Genocide, the fact is that the U.S. House
of Representatives in 1975 and 1984 adopted resolutions commemorating
the Armenian Genocide.
President Ronald Reagan issued a presidential proclamation in 1981that
spoke about "the genocide of the Armenians."
Furthermore, the legislatures of 42 out of 50 U.S. states have adopted
resolutions acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.
In fact, the U.S. government first acknowledged the Armenian Genocide
back in 1951, in a document it submitted to the International Court
of Justice, commonly known as the World Court.
Furthermore, the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities adopted a report in 1985, prepared by special
rapporteur Benjamin Whitaker who is with us today, acknowledging that
the Armenian Genocide met the U.N. criteria for genocide.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution in 1987, recognizing
the Armenian Genocide.
In addition, hundreds of Holocaust and Genocide scholars have issued
joint statements confirming the facts of the Armenian Genocide.
After so many acknowledgments, the Armenian Genocide has become a
universally recognized historical fact.
Regrettably, despite such worldwide acknowledgment, the United Kingdom
remains one of the rare major countries that has yet to recognize it.
Britain’s siding with a denialist state is not so much due to lack
of evidence or conviction, but, sadly, because of sheer political
expediency, with the intent of appeasing Turkey.
It may be wise for the British government to heed the cautionary words
of one of its illustrious leaders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill
who is famously quoted as saying: "An appeaser is someone who feeds
a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
As is well-known to many of you, in his book, "The World Crisis,"
published in 1929, Churchill described the Armenian Genocide as
follows: "In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried
out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in
Asia Minor. …The clearance of the race from Asia Mino was about as
complete as such an act, on a scale so great, could well be. There
is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for
political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing
Turkish soil of a Christian race…. The Armenian people emerged from
the Great War scattered, extirpated in many districts, and reduced
through massacre, losses of war and enforced deportations adopted as
an easy system of killing, by at least a third. Out of a community
of about two and a half millions, three-quarters of a million men,
women, and children had perished. But surely this was the end."
One would hope that the British government would join most of the
enlightened world — certainly most of Europe — in acknowledging the
historical facts as they are, rather than as the Turkish government
wishes them to be!
Armenians no longer need to convince the world that what took
place during the years 1915-1923 was "the first genocide of the
20th century."
A simple acknowledgment of what took place and a mere apology, however,
would not heal the wounds and undo the consequences of the Genocide.
Armenians are still waiting for justice to be meted out, restoring
their historic rights and returning their confiscated lands and
properties.
In recent years, Armenian lawyers have successfully filed lawsuits in
U.S. federal courts, securing millions of dollars from New York Life
and French AXA insurance companies for unpaid claims to policy-holders
who perished in the Genocide.
Several more lawsuits are pending against other insurance companies
and German banks to recover funds belonging to victims of the Armenian
Genocide.
In 1915, a centrally planned and executed attempt was made to uproot
from its ancestral homeland and decimate an entire nation, depriving
the survivors of their cultural heritage as well as their homes,
lands, houses of worship, and personal properties.
A gross injustice was perpetrated against the Armenian people,
which entitles them, as in the case of the Jewish Holocaust, to just
compensation for their enormous losses.
Restitution can take many forms.
As an initial step, the Republic of Turkey could place under the
jurisdiction of the Istanbul-based Armenian Patriarchate all of the
Armenian churches and religious monuments which were expropriated
and converted to mosques and warehouses or outright destroyed.
In the absence of any voluntary restitution by the Republic of Turkey,
Armenians could resort to litigation, seeking "restorative justice."
In considering legal recourse, one should be mindful of the fact that
the Armenian Genocide did neither start nor end in 1915.
Large-scale genocidal acts were committed starting with Sultan
Abdul Hamid’s massacre of 300,000 Armenians from 1894 to 1896; the
subsequent killings of 30,000 Armenians in Adana by the Young Turk
regime in 1909; culminating in the Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians
in 1915 to 1923; and followed by forced Turkification and deportation
of tens of thousands of Armenians by the Republic of Turkey.
Most of the early leaders of the Turkish Republic were high-ranking
Ottoman officials who had participated in perpetrating the Armenian
Genocide.
This unbroken succession in leadership assured the continuity of the
Ottomans’ anti-Armenian policies.
The Republic of Turkey, as the continuation of the Ottoman Empire,
could therefore be held responsible for the Genocide.
An important document, recently discovered in the U.S. archives,
provides irrefutable evidence that the Republic of Turkey continued
to uproot and exile the remnants of Armenians well into the 1930’s
motivated by purely racist reasons.
The document in question is a "Strictly Confidential" cable, dated
March 2nd, 1934, and sent by U.S. Ambassador Robert P. Skinner from
Ankara to the U.S. Secretary of State, reporting the deportation of
Armenians from "the interior of Anatolia to Istanbul."
The U.S. Ambassador wrote: "It is assumed by most of the deportees
that their expulsion from their homes in Anatolia is a part of the
Government’s program of making Anatolia a pure Turkish district.
"They relate that the Turkish police, in towns and villages where
Armenians lived, attempted to instigate local Moslem people to drive
the Armenians away….
"The Armenians were told that they had to leave at once for
Istanbul. They sold their possessions receiving for them ruinous
prices. I have been told that cattle worth several hundred liras a
head had been sold for as little as five liras a head.
"My informant stated that the Armenians were permitted to sell their
property in order that no one of them could say that they were forced
to abandon it. However, the sale under these conditions amounted to
a practical abandonment."
The U.S. Ambassador further reported: "The Armenians were obliged to
walk from their villages to the railways and then they were shipped
by train to Istanbul. …
"The real reason for the deportations is unknown…. It is likely,
though, that their removal is simply one step in the government’s
avowed policy of making Anatolia purely Turkish."
In the 1920’s and 30’s, thousands of Armenian survivors of the
Genocide, were forced out of their homes, in Cilicia and Western
Armenia to locations elsewhere in Turkey or neighboring countries.
In the 1940’s, these racist policies were followed by the Varlik
Vergisi, the imposition of an exorbitant wealth tax on Armenians,
Greeks and Jews.
And during the 1955 Istanbul pogroms, many Greeks as well as Armenians
and Jews were killed and their properties destroyed.
This continuum of massacres, genocide and deportations highlights the
existence of a long-term strategy implemented by successive Turkish
regimes from the 1890’s to more recent times, in order to solve the
Armenian Question with finality.
Consequently, the Republic of Turkey is legally liable for its own
crimes against Armenians, as well as those committed by its Ottoman
predecessors.
Turkey inherited the assets of the Ottoman Empire; And, therefore,
it must have also inherited its liabilities.
It is noteworthy that on several occasions, Turkish leaders have
threatened to take legal action in international courts against
Armenians on the genocide issue.
After some reflection, however, they have quietly backed down, fearing
that they may end up losing such a lawsuit, thus opening the Pandora’s
Box of claims from Armenians!
In recent years, Turkish officials, ignoring the verdicts of the 1919
Turkish Military Tribunals, have frequently claimed that the Armenian
Genocide could not be considered a genocide since there had not been
a court verdict to that effect.
That argument was taken away from them once and for all, on Dec. 12,
2007, when Switzerland’s Federal Tribunal, the country’s Supreme
Court, confirmed a lower court’s conviction of Turkish Party leader
Dogu Perincek for denying the Armenian Genocide.
This is the first time that the highest court of any country passes
such a judgment on the Armenian Genocide, setting a precedent for
all future legal action on this issue.
Finally, since Armenians often refer to their three sequential demands
from Turkey: Recognition of the Genocide; Reparations for their losses;
and the return of their lands; Turks have come to believe that once
the Genocide is recognized, Armenians will then pursue their next
two demands.
This is the main reason why Turks adamantly refuse to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide. They fear that acceptance of the Genocide would
lead to other demands for restitution.
They believe that by denying the first demand, they would be blocking
the ones that are sure to follow.
The fact is that, commemorative resolutions adopted by legislative
bodies of various countries and statements made on the Armenian
Genocide by world leaders have no force of law, and therefore, no
legal consequence.
Armenians, Turks and others involved in this historical, and yet,
contemporary issue, must realize that recognition of the Armenian
Genocide or the lack thereof, will neither enable nor deter its
consideration by international legal institutions.
Once Turks realize that recognition by itself cannot and would not
lead to other demands, they may no longer persist in their obsessive
denial of these tragic events.
Without waiting for any further recognition, Armenians can pursue
their historic rights through proper legal channels, such as
the International Court of Justice (where only states have such
jurisdiction), the European Court of Human Rights and U.S. Federal
Courts.
Justice, based on international law, must take its course.