FEDERATION EURO-ARMENIENNE Pour la Justice et la Démocratie
Avenue de la Renaissance 10
B-1000 Bruxelles
Tel/ Fax: +32 2 732 70 27/26
Website :Eafjd [1]
PRESS RELEASE
THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009
CONTACT : VARTéNIE ECHO
TEL. / FAX. : +32 (0) 2 732 70 27
DURBAN : GENOCIDE DENIAL IS THE MOST PERVERSE FORM OF RACISM
Durban (South Africa) – The anti-racism conference organized by the
United Nations [4] from April 20th to 24th has just released its final
declaration on the struggle against racism [5]. The declaration
tackles the question of genocides and their necessary recognition.
Hence, article 62 of this declaration `recalls that slavery and
the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, apartheid,
colonialism and genocide must never be forgotten and in this regard
welcomes actions undertaken to honour the memory of victims’.
Article 63 `notes actions of [those] countries that have, in the
context of these past tragedies, expressed remorse, offered apologies,
initiated institutionalized mechanisms such as truth and
reconciliation commissions and/or restituted cultural artifacts since
the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, and
calls on those who have not yet contributed to restoring the dignity
of the victims to find appropriate ways to do so’.
`This declaration is a vibrating plea in favour of the necessary
contrition of the criminal States – without which there would be
neither peace, nor justice, nor reconciliation – and a definitive
condemnation of the tortuous and dilatory schemes by which they try to
escape from it’ declared Hilda Tchoboian, the chairperson of the
European Armenian Federation.
The European Armenian Federation recalls that denial partakes to the
crime of genocide, and has no link with freedom of expression, though
it attempts to wear this disguise in order to hide its racist purpose.
In this sense, it constitutes the most perverse form of racism.
Several judgments of the European Court of Human rights insisted on
the social aim of freedom of expression and, thus, on the limitations
which frame it for this purpose.
`In compliance with this final declaration adopted during the
anti-racism conference in Durban, we invite the UN Member States to
urge Turkey to apologise for the Armenian Genocide and that it sets up
the institutional mechanisms which will constitute the premises for
its compensation’ concluded Hilda Tchoboian.
Turkey is the only State in the world which continues an officially
denialist policy directed to the Armenian Genocide. The Turkish State
remains legally and politically responsible for this genocide
according to the International law.