THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IS STILL IMPERATIVE: EDWARD NALBANDIAN

18:14, 20 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian’s Article has been
published in a special issue of magazine

The prevention of crimes against humanity is still imperative

In the current world of drastic political changes, the international
community and individual States occasionally do not manage to address
issues, which at first glance do not seem urgent, even though there
is an understanding that addressing them is of high importance.

Genocide prevention is one of such issues. The Armenian nation, which
survived the first genocide of the 20th century, feels a strong moral
responsibility to bring its contribution to international efforts
in prevention of crimes against humanity. We have exerted our best
efforts and will continue to do so for that purpose.

The recurrence of genocide or its threat is not a turned page for
humanity. Genocide prevention always requires the constant attention
and best efforts of the civilized world, without subordinating that
noble humanitarian cause to any geopolitical calculations.

No single person can feel safe while there is an attempt to exterminate
a whole ethnic group somewhere in the world. Every measure should be
taken beforehand, first of all to prevent the genocidal environment
from maturing into irreversible acts of violence.

Testimonies of the Armenian Genocide can be found in any part of the
world, particularly where Armenians live. The Armenian people passed
through the horrors of that tragedy in the Ottoman Empire. There was
an attempt to strip millions of Armenians of their right to life, as
well as their past — thousands of cultural and religious monuments
were destroyed and the survivors were driven off the lands they had
inhabited for many centuries.

One of the aspects inherent to the case of the Armenian Genocide is
the presence of direct international obligations of the Ottoman Empire,
which adhered towards the great powers at the Berlin Conference in 1878
“to carry out, without further delay, the ameliorations and reforms,
which are called for by local needs in the provinces inhabited by
Armenians and to guarantee their security” (1).

Under the circumstances of continuous harassments of the Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire, instead of improvement of the plight of the
Armenians, the world witnessed Armenian massacres and pogroms. The
most large-scale massacres before the genocide were committed by the
Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II between 1894 and 1896 when around 300,000
Armenians were killed, and in the 1909 Adana Massacres committed by
the Young Turks, when around 30,000 Armenians were massacred.

Back then no effective measures were taken to call the perpetrators
of these massacres to justice. The atmosphere of impunity largely
contributed to yet more horrendous massacres of around 1.5 million
Armenians, with World War I serving as a “suitable” cover for their
implementation. Thus, the genocidal policy of the Ottoman Empire
continued for more than a quarter of a century and culminated by what
the Armenians called “Mets Yeghern” (The Great Calamity).

The first time the great powers paid a concerted attention to the
massacres was on May 24, 1915, when the Allied Powers — Russia,
France and Great Britain, adopted a special declaration warning the
perpetrators of the atrocities against the Armenian people that they
would be held personally responsible for “these new crimes of Turkey
against humanity and civilization.” This was one of the first occasions
of the use of the term “crimes against humanity” on an international
level, leading to its elaboration as an inherent concept of the
contemporary international legal system. In 1929 Winston Churchill
characterized the Armenian massacres as a “holocaust” and added that
“this crime was planned and executed for political reasons.

The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a
Christian race.”

Nowadays some Turkish narratives are presenting their own perceptions
of history as the only true ones, a “just memory” into which other
peoples’ memories should fit. This is an exercise against memory
and history. The study of history suffers when memory is applied
selectively, when “the organized murder of the Armenian race” is
presented as imaginative memory of the descendants of the survivors.

In fact, the Armenian Genocide is a part of the memory and history of
the Armenian nation and of humanity as a whole, including the Muslim
world. One of the earliest references to the Armenian Genocide comes
from a Muslim witness, Fayez El Ghossein, who in 1916 published his
work entitled “The Massacres in Armenia.” Sharif of Mecca Hussein
ibn Ali al-Hashimi was one of the prominent Islamic leaders, who
acted against the annihilation of the Armenians and called on his
subjects to defend Armenians as they would defend themselves and
their children. In 1919-1921 Turkish public figures such as Refi
Cevat, Ahmet Refik Altinay and many others referred to the large
scale extermination of Armenians. Many Muslim historians refer to
the massacres of Armenians as genocide, while Arab historian Moussa
Prince used the term “Armenocide”, considering it as “the most
genocidal genocide.”

The Arab authors Fuad Hasan Hafiz, Samir Arbash and others defined
the Armenian Genocide as “the blood page in the history of mankind of
the 20th century.” It was the absence of the unequivocal condemnation
and elimination of consequences of the Armenian Genocide that made
the young philologist Rafael Lemkin in 1921 ask his professor why
the Armenians did not have the masterminds of the Armenian Calamity
prosecuted. To that question his professor replied that there was no
law under which they could be brought to justice. Afterwards Lemkin
decided to get immersed in international law dedicating his life to
the study of crimes against humanity, which, among others, paved the
way for the adoption of the 1948 Convention. Lemkin alluded that he
defined the term genocide also by referring to the very policy of mass
extermination perpetrated against Armenians. It was the Shoah that
pushed the international community to codify the crime of genocide
through the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide. The following seven decades have demonstrated that
all good-will is not enough to exclude genocides and crimes against
humanity from happening again.

Close examination of the genocides of the 20th century demonstrates
that the perpetrators of genocides in different geographical areas and
different historical periods have been “skilled enough” to identify
the tactics of their murderous predecessors and learn from them. The
Young Turk’s Committee of Union and Progress in Turkey, the National
Socialist German Workers’ Party in Germany, and the Hutu National
Revolutionary Movement for Democracy in Rwanda all used special
paramilitary organizations as the main perpetrators of mass killings.

These were Teskilat Mahsusa, the Schutzstaffel, Interahamwe. These as
well as other crimes against humanity had many other similarities
in the genocidal practices, such as the treatment of victims,
expropriation of their properties and ways of extermination.

Oppressions, intolerance towards and demonization of the
representatives of ethnic, religious, minority and other groups and
their cultural heritage, and limited ethnic cleansings could indicate
the emergence of genocidal atmospheres, and require immediate,
unconditional and united preventive efforts from the international
community.

The failure to prevent genocide in one place provides a solid ground
for its recurrence in other places. In this context many refer to
Hitler’s quotation from August 1939 when he rhetorically asked “Who
still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”

Genocides do not occur according to a single model and in order
to develop preventive mechanisms we should have an accurate
understanding of the history of genocides, their causes, the methods
of implementation and the subsequent developments. At the same time,
we must be ready to learn from past failures and be ready for new
challenges.

One of the main contemporary documents enclosing the main measures for
the prevention of the crime of genocide is the UN Human Rights Council
Resolution of 22nd March 2013, initiated by Armenia and co-sponsored
by 62 countries. It envisages the necessary international measures for
genocide prevention. Particularly, we can see the three main pillars
of genocide prevention: early warning, human rights protection, and
public campaign for education and awareness. These pillars include
a number of components.

First, the convention envisages that the international community must
be aware of the risk of genocide as early as possible in order to react
promptly, before it is too late. Usually perpetrators of genocides
try to hide their intentions as long as possible. However, it is
quite hard for them to cover up the preparation of such grave crimes
for a long time. Hence the international community and particularly
international organizations should evaluate the origins of genocidal
atmosphere leading to this heinous crime and effectively prevent it.

Over the course of the past decade both the United Nations and
the regional bodies, as well as some human rights NGO s, have made
much progress in improving early warning and assessment systems. We
should do our utmost to ensure that these advances continue in the
years ahead. Early identification and warning by themselves will
not be effective unless they are followed by concrete mechanisms of
deterrence and protection.

Second, prevention of genocide is a part of the complex international
mechanisms of the human rights protection. This is the basic and
most efficient way to exclude the possibility of the occurrence of a
genocidal atmosphere in a society. Strong legal traditions and moral
values stand on the most important defense line against these horrible
crimes. Genocide is an unthinkable crime for a society which is founded
on the protection of human rights, on the values of mutual respect,
tolerance and non-violence. In other words, genocide is dead before it
is born in a society with strong human rights protection traditions
and vice versa — human rights protection is basically non-existent
wherever genocide occurs.

The connecting chain of human rights protection and genocide
prevention is the protection of ethnic, religious and other
minorities’ rights. For most cases of genocide the main objective of
the perpetrators is the extermination of an ethnic minority. Reasons
for such a crime may be the wish to prevent a minority group from
implementing its right to self-determination. In order to rule out the
possibility of such developments the international community should
particularly assist the States that have a diverse ethnic population
to maintain proper human rights protection and particularly minority
rights protection.

Moreover wherever it is necessary, the international community
should support the peaceful implementation of the right to
self-determination of the peoples. As it was mentioned in a recent
report by an Independent Expert, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas for the UN ,
rather than perceiving self-determination as a source of conflict,
a better approach is to see armed conflict as a consequence of the
violation of self-determination.

Finally, the third pillar of goals envisaged in the UN Human Rights
Council Resolution is to raise public awareness through education
and remembrance. Generations should get accurate knowledge of the
history of past tragedies, past genocides. The full acknowledgement
and condemnation of committed genocides are one of the most effective
tools for the prevention of their reoccurrence in the future. This is
particularly an important condition for the possibility of an effective
reconciliation among peoples who directly encountered genocide. The
right of people to their memory, their right to knowledge of the
history of past tragedies through education and remembrance has
pivotal roles on preventing and condemning genocide.

Genocide scholars nowadays consider genocide denial as one of the
stages of genocide. According to the Genocide Watch following
classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization,
organization, polarization, preparation, persecution and extermination,
the denial is classified as the final stage that lasts throughout and
always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further
genocides, because along with impunity, denial paves the way for the
repetition of new crimes against humanity.

Independently of geopolitical or any other interests, all members of
the international community should stand together in the recognition,
condemnation and punishment of past genocides, especially in light of
the 1968 Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations,
in their efforts towards their prevention in the future. As it is
mentioned in the preamble of the abovementioned resolution, the
impunity for the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity encourages their occurrence and is a fundamental obstacle
to the furtherance of cooperation among peoples and the promotion of
international peace and security. Fighting impunity for such crimes
is an important factor in their prevention. Genocide remembrance
days should be days of mourning not only for the descendants of
victims, but for the descendants of the perpetrators. These days
should be approached with commitment to move towards recognition
and reconciliation. The true reconciliation cannot be achieved by
forgetting the past, feeding younger generations with tales of denial.

Moreover, in the current globalized world it is gradually becoming
impossible for a State to conceal from its own society all the facts
concerning the tragic events of the past. Hence, continuing the
policy of denial and falsification of facts simply widens the gap of
understanding between the very government and the society in a State
which or the predecessor of which perpetrated genocide.

The civilized world should resolutely reject the incitement to hatred,
racism, dissemination of intolerance, denial of genocide, and crimes
against humanity under the guise of freedom of expression. One of
the tools of denial nowadays is the minimization of the suffering of
the victims, trivialization of the scale of the losses and equation
of the sufferings of the victims and the perpetrators. Recently,
we have often witnessed this new tactic of “soft denial”.

These are the main measures that are envisaged for the prevention
of the reoccurrence of genocides. But whatever measures we take, we
cannot expect effective results unless there is a proper realization
of how important it is to prevent any occurrence of genocide and
without sufficient will by the members of the international community
to take practical steps whenever it is necessary. No matter how often
we take measures for the prevention of genocides, these efforts will
be rewarded if we observe and enforce all available prevention tools.

As exactly a century ago, nowadays too, witnessing new attempts at
genocides and new tactics of their denials, the issue of preventing
crimes against humanity is still imperative.

From: A. Papazian