BRITISH GOVERNMENT ‘SHOULD RECOGNISE’ ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

23/03/10

Baroness Cox writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her oral question on
the Armenian Genocide

I am asking HMG whether it will reconsider its position on the
recognition of the Armenian Genocide sadly, without any hope of a
change in the British government’s consistent policy of refusal to
acknowledge the truth.

However, the question is timely for three reasons:

1. The recent recognition by the Swedish Parliament of the
state-organised massacres of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish
authorities, beginning in 1915, as genocide the latest in a long
line of Parliaments and other official bodies, such as the Vatican,
to do so.

2. The publication last October of ‘Was there an Armenian Genocide?

Geoffrey Robertson QC’s opinion with reference to Foreign and
Commonwealth Office documents which show how British ministers,
Parliament and people have been misled’.

3. This year marks the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the
genocide and recognition is long overdue. Every genocide which remains
unrecognised is, in effect, condoned and can serve as an encouragement
to other potential perpetrators of subsequent genocides. This was most
infamously illustrated by Hitler’s reference to the Armenian Genocide
before he embarked on the extension of the Holocaust in Poland:
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Whenever initiatives are taken to encourage recognition of the
systematic slaughter and deportation of between one and two million
Armenians as genocide, the Turkish government becomes extremely active
in attempting to prevent this, through intimidating political pressure
and threats of economic boycott.

This response is tragic for at least three reasons:

1. Refusal to acknowledge the truth inevitably prevents any possibility
of healing for the Armenian people, and of genuine reconciliation
between Armenia and Turkey.

2. It would be healing for the Turkish people themselves for the truth
of their history to be acknowledged. When I was in Turkey, talking to
professional Turkish colleagues, many said they wished their government
would acknowledge the genocide. They knew the reality and felt deeply
unhappy at being forced to hide the truth and to live a lie.

3. As already stated, refusal to recognise historical reality of any
genocide can serve as an encouragement to other potential perpetrators,
who will believe that they can get away with similar genocides with
impunity.

Geoffrey Robertson QC’s concluding paragraph claims:

‘HMG’s real and only policy has been to evade truthful answers
to questions about the Armenian Genocide, because the truth would
discomfort the Turkish government. It can be predicted that any future
question on the subject will be met with the same meaningless formula
about "insufficiently unequivocal evidence", disguising the simple
fact that HMG will not now come to terms with an issue on which it
was once so volubly certain, namely that the Armenian massacres were a
"crime against humanity" which should never be forgiven or forgotten.

Times change, but as other civilised nations recognise, the universal
crimes of genocide and torture have no statute of limitations.’

This debate offers HMG an opportunity to join other civilised nations.

I greatly fear that it will fail to do so, and perpetuate Britain’s
dishonour. But at least it will provide an opportunity for the truth to
be recorded once again in the British Parliament, for British citizens
to make up their own minds and, as the Welsh Assembly has already done,
to its great credit, to acknowledge and proclaim the historic truth.