FULL SPEECH NAJAT VALLAUD-BELKACEM AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE CONFERENCE

[ Part 2.2: “Attached Text” ]

Sorbonne March 25, 2015

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Ladies and gentlemen,

Mr. Rector of Paris, Chancellor of the Universities,

Distinguished Ambassadors

Distinguished professors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Hundred years. There was about a hundred years one of the most
appalling episodes in the history of Europe and the world. The
political project of the Committee “Union and Progress” to the total
extermination of the Armenian people, would be implemented triggering
a mass crime, unprecedented in its scope and in nature.

Genocide, the first modern genocide – except for the genocide of
the Herero people in 1904, sometimes called “colonial genocide” –
was about to be committed.

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Today, one hundred years after the genocide, what better symbol that
the meeting of researchers, historians of the world put together in the
service of understanding, knowledge and recognition of what happened ?

What better answer to the barbarism that these intelligences gathered
here to relentlessly go further in the pursuit of scientific truth
and advance universal knowledge?

What better symbol finally, the desire to transmit to future
generations the memory, this prestigious and solemn place, the Grand
Amphitheatre of the oldest universities? That one even which welcomed
on 9 April 1916, the meeting in “Homage to Armenia” in the presence
of Paul Deschanel, President of the Chamber of Deputies, the writer
Anatole France and the Minister of Instruction public at the time,
Paul Painleve?

Paul Painleve then stood with others to denounce loudly the crime being
committed. I quote: “The nightmare has become a present reality. The
massacres that last year Armenia bloodshed beyond their scope and
the most atrocious cruelty legends of all ages and all countries. >>

Today, the echo of those voices still ringing in our ears.

I wish to thank the “International Scientific Council for the study of
the Armenian Genocide” and all its partners, including the mission in
2015 of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France
and the Regional Council of Ile-de-France, to organizing the biggest
event for the 1915 centenary This conference, under the patronage of
the President of the Republic, combines high places for French research
and knowledge transfer: the Sorbonne, but also the Memorial Shoah,
the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences and the National
Library of France .

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It attests to the investment in research on the genocide of a large
community of scientists worldwide. It will, for the first time,
allow to question the balance of one hundred years of research on the
Armenian genocide, but also to examine, in a comparative dimension,
the specificity of the twentieth century in the history of humanity,
as the era of genocide and mass violence.

The role of history is crucial because the historian has the primary
role of establishing the truth of the facts to shed light on what
has been.

Subject to a commitment to systematic extermination, Armenians were
first victims of persecution. They were referred to as Armenians
because they were Armenians.

Because they represented the soul and the Armenian culture, artists,
intellectuals, men and women, were pursued and arrested.

They paid a heavy price.

On 24 April, the musician Komitas was arrested, as well as 650 other
intellectuals. The life of the greatest genius of Armenian music,
which was rescued from oblivion the most beautiful Armenian folk songs,
was broken at that time by the trials of deportation and torture. He
fell definitively into madness.

The poet Daniel Varoulan, one of the greatest poets of Armenian
literature, was also arrested on April 24 before being brutally
murdered 23 August 1915.

Novelist and poet Zabel Yesayan, was, too, targeted by the raid. She
miraculously escaped from it. She later worked tirelessly to collect
the testimonies of genocide survivors, until overtaken by another
barbarism, that of Stalin’s Gulag, where she disappeared in 1943.

The exterminator will continued relentlessly: the entire Armenian
people was intended.

The men were killed and their women and children were massacred or
deported in appalling conditions. They died on the way, exhaustion,
or locked up in camps. Killing in Syria, Mesopotamia, the cradle of
European civilization, occurred when other atrocities are committed
today.

Research has estimated that, from 1915 to 1917, two-thirds of the
Armenians, at least 1.3 million people lost their lives because of
the deportations, concentration camps and mass executions.

Research has helped to support and analyze these facts, and name the
genocide name. The rigorous study of sources, testimonies of survivors,
documents, has established this truth, that no longer debate in the
scientific community.

There is no more appropriate term in our language as coined by the
jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1943 to name the unnameable, to qualify the
will of systematic destruction of a people for what it is.

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But if the work of historians is to know, it is also essential because
it sustains recognition.

The French Republic has taken note of the progress of historical
research and has registered in the single article of the law of 29
January 2001 “France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of
1915” .

This is essential because it is the recognition due to the 500 000
French of Armenian origin, descendants of survivors; to all of them,
refugees in France, as Missak Manouchian, fought for France and died
for her hero.

This recognition is, universally, due recognition to individuals
persecuted, oppressed minorities and peoples threatened their
existence.

This is also what led France to assert that denial is intolerable
because the law is what protects against all forms of manipulation. And
this is the position of France to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Armenian diaspora living in free countries have beautifully
illustrated how scientific knowledge is an essential weapon for
recognition and against Holocaust denial. Just like Archag Tchobanian,
arrived in Paris in 1895 in defense of his people rushed into the
Hamidian massacres, the Armenian intellectuals have the book and
writing a fight for the truth.

In the area of research, we owe much to Armenian historians, whether
the great French historians Anahide Ter Minassian, Raymond Kervokian
and many others, or American historians such as Vahakn Dadrian and
Richard Hovannisian.

In Turkey, the Armenians are working hand in hand with Turkish
intellectuals and historians, some of whom have paid with their lives
this fight for truth: I think in particular of Hrant Dink, murdered on
19 January 2007. I also want to acknowledge the political scientist
Bursa Ersanli and publisher Ragip Zarakolu, and thank them for being
here today.

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But researchers of Armenian identity n’Å“uvrent not alone. And
Event centenary installs Armenian historians in the heart of the
global history of social sciences genocide; it occasionally, and this
conference is the event of the passage of the Armenian Genocide to
the status of global history object. In France, the opening up of
the object of study, Ternon Yves and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, were the
precursors, continued with the contribution of the First World War
specialists: historians of the Great War ‘now fully include the study
and understanding of the extremes of war violence.

The contribution of turcologie was also crucial, experts of the
Turkish-Ottoman world who knew uncompromising approach the event.

Finally, in France, the comparative study of genocide has informed the
event in light of research on the Holocaust, but also for research,
booming, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

Today is strengthened by the sum of these searches we can collectively
remember and honor the victims. Research, the book of creation, are
also a calming pain of the memories. These are all bridges between
the past and the future.

Yes, the work of historians is finally allowing a nation to look
further into the future, and to prevent the killing of reproducing.

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The story, as the science of the past of nations, by teaching us
where we came from, also allows us to inform our future. Because,
thanks to her, we can project ourselves collectively, it helps us
build our citizenship.

Because republican citizenship is based on knowledge, understanding,
denial of fate, the school has a central role to play in this
transmission. It is she who can make real the promise of the Republic
his children to grow them in equality and tolerance. It is she who
can sow the seeds of a shared memory.

I want to pay tribute to all the history and geography teachers from
France who contribute everyday. The genocide of the Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire, which is part of our memory to all, is studied by
all during the compulsory school in 3rd grade.

At school, we transmit the awakening of citizenship, culture debate
of ideas, the struggle against prejudice and against all forms of
persecution. We learn the difference between the controversy, dialogue,
which is the source of knowledge, and manipulation or falsification.

At school, students must learn to understand the world, but also learn
to want to change it, to fully take their place as citizens. This
is the meaning of the reforms we adopt, with the introduction
next September moral and civic education throughout compulsory
education. Also with the reform of the college, which allows students
to be more involved in their learning.

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But this transmission can not be done only at school, without the
support of research.

It must continue in higher education and research, where studies on
genocide should be able to better find their way, as “genocide studies”
could find their overseas particular.

The magnitude of the issues they cover, they concern numerous
scientific disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and
beyond. As we enter the second century of research on the Armenian
genocide, I would launch a mission study drawing up an inventory of
research on genocide to allow it to grow. Confronting perspectives,
understand what led to the tragic events of the past, this is what
will allow us to prevent the possibility of their repetition in the
future. This is what will allow us to continue the fight against
oblivion.

This is the sense I think the President of the Republic wished to
give this symposium, held under the high patronage.

Meanwhile on April 24, where I will go to Yerevan with President of
the Republic for outstanding international commemoration, I like to see
in the holding of this major international conference at the Sorbonne
sustainable Registration promise this story in the present and in
the future: the very definition of history according to Thucydides,
who called him “a treasure for eternity. >>

Thank you.

JPEG – 5 MB Friday, March 27, 2015, Claire (C) armenews.com

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Photos of Claire Barbuti