GENOCIDE RESOLUTION APPROVED BY SWEDISH PARLIAMENT — FULL TEXT
news.am
Ma rch 15 2010
Armenia
NEWS.am posts unofficial translation of the motion to Genocide
Resolution approved by Swedish Parliament on March 11.
1 Proposal for Parliament Decision
1. The Parliament announces to the government its decision in reference
to what is stated in the motion regarding Sweden recognizing the
1915 genocide against Armenians, Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans and
Pontic Greeks.
2. The Parliament announces to the government its decision in reference
to what is stated in the motion that Sweden should act within EU
and UN for an international recognition of the 1915 genocide against
Armenians, Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks.
3. The Parliament announces to the government its decision in
reference to what is stated in the motion that Sweden should
act for Turkey to recognize the 1915 genocide against Armenians,
Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks.
2 Background
"Forum for living history is an authority which has the mission to –
with basis in the Holocaust – work with issues which concern tolerance,
democracy and human rights. By illuminating the darkest pieces of
the human history we want to affect the future."
So reads the description of an agency which works on mission by order
of the Swedish Government and educates, among others, about the 1915
genocide. The lesson of history is one of the cornerstones of the
present-day democracies where we have learned of our mistakes and by
preventing repetition of earlier errors we strive for a better future.
However, a prevention of future missteps, especially if these are
known from the history, can not be implemented if one does not openly
recognizes committed errors. Thus, history revisionism is a dangerous
tool for facilitating repetition of the dark pages of the history.
The 1915 genocide foremost engulfed Armenians,
Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans and Pontic Greeks, but later came to also
affect other minorities. It was the dream of a large Turanic Empire,
Great Turan, which caused the Turkish leaders wanting to ethnically
homogenize the remains of the decaying Ottoman Empire at the turn of
the 19th century. This was achieved under the cover of the ongoing
world war, when the Armenian, Assyrian/Syrian/Chaldean and Pontic
Greek population of the empire were, almost entirely, annihilated.
Researchers estimate that about 1,500,000 Armenians, between 250,000
and 500,000 Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans and about 350,000 Pontic
Greeks have been killed or disappeared.
During the short period following the Turkish defeat in 1918 until the
time when the Turkish nationalistic movement, under the leadership
of Mustafa Kemal, the genocide was discussed openly. Political
and military leaders stood on trial, accused for "war crimes"
and "committed crimes against humanity". Several of them were
found guilty and sentenced to the death or prison. During these
trials horrible details about the persecution of the minorities
in the Ottoman Empire were reveled. Thus, Turkey went through the
same phase as the one Germany experienced after the Second World
War. However, the process was short-lived. The emergence of the Turkish
nationalistic movement and the dissolution of the Sultanate resulted
in the discontinuation of the trials and the majority of the accused
were set free. Almost, the entire remaining Christian population –
Armenians, Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans, and Pontic Greeks – were
expelled from areas they had inhabited for over thousands of years.
3 UN Genocide Convention 1948, the European Parliament and Official
Recognitions
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term "genocide"
during the 1940s and was the father of the UN Convention of Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was fully aware of the
1915 genocide and the failure of the international community to
intervene. His revision of the definition was adopted in the UN
Convention which reads as follows:
Article 2) In the present Convention, genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
– Killing members of the group;
– Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
– Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
– Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
– Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Furthermore, it is established that the present-day UN Convention from
1948 is not a new legislation, but merely a ratification of existing
international laws on "crimes against humanity" which were stated in
the Sèvres Treaty, Article 230 (1920). Even more important is the
fact that the UN Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory
Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, adopted on
November 26, 1968, in power since November 11, 1970, which ratifies
its retroactive an non-prescriptive nature. Of this very reason,
both massacres in the Ottoman Empire and the Holocaust are cases of
genocide in accordance to the UN Convention, in spite the fact that
both occurred before the Convention was established.
During the history of UN two larger studies/reports have been
conducted on the crime of genocide. The first was the so-called
Ruhashyankiko Report, from 1978, and the second was the Whitaker
Report, conducted by Benjamin Whitaker in 1985 (Economic and Social
Council Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Thirty-eighth session,
Item 4 of the provisional agenda, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6).
The 1915 genocide is mentioned in several places in as an example
of committed genocides during the 20th century. The report was voted
on in the Subcommittee of the UN Committee for Human Rights with the
voices 14 against 1 (4 abstentions) in August, 1985. On June 18, 1987,
the European Parliament officially recognized the Armenian genocide.
Since 1965, that is, the 50th anniversary of the genocide, several
countries and organizations have officially recognized the 1915
genocide, among others Uruguay (1965), Cypress (1982), Russia (1995),
Greece (1996), Lebanon (1997), Belgium (1998), France (1998), Italy
(2000), The Vatican (2000), Switzerland (2003), Argentina (2003),
Canada (2004), Slovakia (2004), Netherlands (2004), Poland (2005),
Venezuela (2005), Germany (2005), Lithuania (2005), and Chile (2007).
4 The Research on the 1915 Genocide and Swedish Knowledge
Second to the Holocaust, the 1915 genocide is regarded as the most
studied case in the modern time. Today a broad and interdisciplinary
consensus exists among an overwhelming majority of genocide scholars
who regard the massacres in the Ottoman Empire during World War I
as genocide and which is referred by the scholars as the "genocide
prototype" (while the Holocaust is called the "genocide paradigm").
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), an
independent world leading and interdisciplinary authority within the
area, has in several occasions ratified a consensus in this matter,
namely: June 13, 1997, June 13, 2005, October 5, 2007 and April 23,
2008. The resolution from July 13, 2007 reads as follows:
WHEREAS the denial of genocide is widely recognized as the final stage
of genocide, enshrining impunity for the perpetrators of genocide,
and demonstrably paving the way for future genocides;
WHEREAS the Ottoman genocide against minority populations during and
following the First World War is usually depicted as a genocide against
Armenians alone, with little recognition of the qualitatively similar
genocides against other Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire;
BE IT RESOLVED that it is the conviction of the International
Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against
Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted
a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian
Greeks.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Association calls upon the government
of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations,
to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps
toward restitution.
ON June 8, more than 60 world leading genocide experts signed an
appeal directed to the members of the Parliament where they dismissed
the claims about disunity among scholars regarding the 1915 genocide.
The research must continue and both Turkey and the world must secure
the possibilities for an open, independent and undisturbed atmosphere,
among others by Turkey having to give full access to its archives
as well as allowing similar discussions without scientist, authors,
journalists and publishers risking prosecution for having commented
on the reality of the genocide.
New research at Uppsala University witnesses also about a genuine
Swedish knowledge of the 1915 genocide. Swedish Foreign Ministry and
General Staff Head Quarters were fully informed about the ongoing
annihilation through reports which the Swedish Ambassador Per Gustaf
August Cosswa Anckarsvärd and the Swedish Military Attaché Einar af
Wirsén (both stationed in Constantinople) sent to Stockholm. Among
others one can read the following:
â~@¢ Anckarsvärd, July 6, 1915: "Mr. Minister, The persecutions of
the Armenians have reached hair-raising proportions and all points to
the fact that the Young Turks want to seize the opportunity, since due
to different reasons there are no effective external pressure to be
feared, to once and for all put an end to the Armenian question. The
means for this are quite simple and consist of the extermination of
the Armenian nation."
â~@¢ Anckarsvärd, July 22, 1915: "It is not only the Armenians, but
also the Turkish subjects of Greek nationality who at the present are
subjected to severe persecutions… According to Mr.Tsamados [Greek
chargé d’affaires] it [the deportations] can not be any other issue
than an annihilation war against the Greek nation in Turkey …"
â~@¢ Anckarsvärd, September 2, 1915: "The six so-called
Armenian vilayets seem to be totally cleansed from, at least, its
Armenian-Catholic Armenians… It is obvious that the Turks are taking
the opportunity to, now during the war, exterminate the Armenian nation
so that when the peace comes no Armenian question longer exists."
â~@¢ Wirsén, May 13, 1916: " The health situation in Iraq is
horrifying.
Typhus fever claims numerous victims. The Armenian persecutions have
to a large degree contributed to the spreading of the disease, since
the expelled [Armenians] in hundred thousands have died from hunger
and deprivation along the roads."
â~@¢ Anckarsvärd, January 5, 1917: " The situation would have been
different if Turkey had followed the advice of the Central Powers
in letting them organise the question of provisioning etc…Even
worse than this is, however, the extermination of Armenians, which,
perhaps, could have been prevented if German advisers had in time
received authority over the civilian administration as the German
officers actually practise over army and navy."
â~@¢ Envoy Ahlgren, August 20, 1917: "The high prices continue
to climb…
There are several reasons:… and finally the strong decreasing of
labour power, caused partly by the mobilisation but partly also by
the extermination of the Armenian race".
In his memoirs "Memories from Peace and War" (1942), Wirsén dedicated
an entire chapter to the genocide. In "The Murder of a Nation",
Wirsén writes that:
"Officially, these [the deportations] had the goal to move the entire
Armenian population to the steppe regions of Northern Mesopotamia and
Syria, but in reality they aimed to exterminate the Armenians, whereby
the pure Turkish element in Asia Minor would achieve a dominating
position…. The annihilation of the Armenian nation in Asia Minor
must upset all human feelings. The way in which the Armenian issue
was solved was hair-raising."
In addition to these, there are numerous eyewitness accounts which
missionaries and field workers such as Alma Johansson, Maria Anholm,
Lars Erik Högberg, E. John Larson, Olga Moberg, Per Pehrsson and
others published. Hjalmar Branting was the very first person, who
long before Lemkin, used the term genocide ("folkmord") when he,
on March 26, 1917, called the persecutions against the Armenians as
"an organized and systematic genocide, worse than what we ever have
seen in Europe".
A recognition of the 1915 genocide is not only important in order to
redress the affected ethic groups and minorities which still live in
Turkey, but also for the promotion of Turkey’s development. Turkey can
not become a better democracy if the truth about its past is denied.
The Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was murdered for having openly
expressed himself regarding thegenocide and several others have been
prosecuted by the same infamous Paragraph 301. The latest changes
of the law by the Turkish Government are purely cosmetic and do not
imply any changes what so ever. It is said that history should be
left to historians and we completely support that. However, it is the
responsibility of the politicians to act in accordance to historic
facts and historic research. Furthermore, a Swedish recognition of
the truth and a historic fact should not imply any hinder for either
the reform work in Turkey or Turkey’s EU negotiations. With basis in
what we have stated above, we consider that Sweden should recognize
the 1915 genocide against Armenians, Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans, and
Pontic Greeks. This should the Parliament present as its consideration
to the Government.
Furthermore, we do consider that Sweden should act internationally,
within the framework for EU and UN, for an international recognition of
the 1915 genocide against Armenians, Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans, and
Pontic Greeks. This should the Parliament present as its consideration
to the Government.
As long as countries such as Sweden does not confront Turkey with the
truth and the facts which are at hand, Turkey can not go further on
its path to an more open society, a better democracy and fully open
up its possibilities for a membership in EU. Thus, Sweden should
act for Turkey to recognize the 1915 genocide against Armenians,
Assyrians/Syrians/Chaldeans, and Pontic Greeks. This should the
Parliament present as its consideration to the Government.
Stockholm October 2, 2008
Alice Åström (Left) Annelie Enochson (Christian Democrat) Bodil
Ceballos (Green) Christopher Odmann (Green) Esabelle Dingizian
(Green) Fredrik Malm (Liberal) Hans Linde (Left) Helena Leander
(Green) Kalle Larsson (Left) Lars Ohly (Left) Lennart Sacrédeus
(Christian Democrat) Mats Pertoft (Green) Max Andersson (Green)
Nikos Papadopoulos (Social Democrat) Yilmaz Kerimo (Social Democrat).