Armenia Solidarity Press Release
(in conjunction with Nor Serount Publications, and the British Armenian
All Party Parliamentary Group)
[email protected]
Armenia Solidarity, The Temple of Peace, Cardiff
Tel: 07876561398 (Int: ++447876561398)
British Minister for Europe calls for debate on Turkish influence on
Denialist historians
Evidence that UK Foreign Secretary used the term Armenian Genocide
In a startling development, British Minister for Europe Rt. Hon.
Geoff Hoon called for a debate on Turkish influence on historians who
deny the Armenian Genocide. He made this statement in a letter to
Foreign Secretary Rt Hon. Margaret Beckett, who had forwarded to him an
enquiry as to the government’s position on the Armenian Genocide from a
constituent(Guy Dickenson,who is associate of Armenia Solidarity).
His words were: "The issue of whether or not some historians are
under Turkish influence is itself a matter for debate" Presumably, these
are the historians referred to when he implied recently that the
government had consulted historians in deciding that evidence for
Genocide was "not sufficiently unequivocal"
Our response to this will be to invite him to debate the extent
Turkish influence on notorious denialist historians such as Heath Lowry,
Justin Mcarthy and Norman Stone. Prominent UK historians will be
invited to the debate, which will be held in the House of Commons
Grand Committe room on the 24th april following our presentation of
compelling evidence for the Genocide. The meeting will be held from
4.00 p.m.untill 5.30 p.m. The public is also invited
The letter also betrays the fact that the Foreign Secretary herself
(Rt Hon Margaret Beckett) had used the term Armenian Genocide when
writing to the Rt Hon Geoff Hoon with the original enquiry. He responded
:
Thank you for your letter…….about the government’s position on the
question of the Armenian "Genocide".We can deduce that she had used the
term Armenian Genocide without inverted commas in the enquiry, taken
from her constituent, Guy Dickenson.
It is only two months since the Minister for Europe agreed that
"over a million Armenians were killed in the massacres of 1915" in a
reply to an Ann Snelgrove, the MP of her constituent,Armenia Solidarity
activist Armenag Topalian of Swindon.
We are confident that the minister will be made aware that the
government’s refusal to equate the killing of "over a million Armenians
in the massacres of 1915"(the government’s words) with genocide as
defined in the UN 1948 Convention (below)defies all known forms of
logic,
In the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide,
Genocide is defined as:
"Any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group"
All of these conditions occurred in 1915 and there were hundreds of
thousands of survivors who testified to witnessing (a) and experiencing
(b) (c) and (d) so it would seem that from this definition,what happened
to the Armenians was the worse kind of genocide, namely a Holocaust.