Plaid Cymru, Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionist Party recognise the Armenian Genocide

The Parliamentary Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales), the Social Democratic and Labour, and the Ulster Unionist parties have recognised the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. All Members of Parliament representing the parties at Westminster have signed EDM 357 calling upon the House of Commons to recognise the Armenian Genocide.

A Shameful Act: the Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility by Taner Akçam (Telegraph)

"In 2005, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was charged with the criminal offence of "insulting Turkishness" for stating that "a million Armenians were killed in these [Turkish] lands and nobody dares to talk about it".

Last October, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first Turkish Nobel prizewinner. But in Turkey the use of the word "genocide" to describe the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the early 20th century is still taboo, and carries a three-year prison sentence.

In his scrupulously researched book on the ethnic cleansing that Theodore Roosevelt described as "the greatest crime" of the First World War, the Turkish-born sociologist and historian Taner Akçam calls on the people of Turkey "to consider the suffering inflicted in their name".

Open letter to the prime minister of Turkey

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS

April 6, 2005

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan:

We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an "impartial study by historians" concerning the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is hundreds of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course of decades. The scholarly evidence reveals the following:

On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens - an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years. The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world including Turkey's wartime allies Germany, Austria and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.

The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international scholarly, legal, and human rights community:

1. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide in 1944,cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he meant by genocide.

2. The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

3. In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an organization of the world's foremost experts on genocide, unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.

4. 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000 declaring the "incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide" and urging western democracies to acknowledge it.

5. The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), the Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.

6. Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as William A. Schabas's Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against humanity.

We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide - how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history. We would also note that scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called "scholars" work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide.

We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and equal participant in international, democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and people have done in the case of the Holocaust.

Sincerely,

Robert Melson
Professor of Political Science
President, International Association of Genocide Scholars

Israel Charny
Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide

Peter Balakian
Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities
Colgate University

TIME: The U.S. and Turkey: Honesty Is the Best Policy

"Ninety-two years ago, the "Young Turk" regime ordered the executions of Armenian civic leaders and intellectuals, and Turkish soldiers and militia forced the Armenian population to march into the desert, where more than a million died by bayonet or starvation. That horror helped galvanize Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, to invent the word genocide, which was defined not as the extermination of an entire group but rather as a systematic effort to destroy a group. Lemkin wanted the term — and the international legal convention that grew out of it — to encompass ethnic cleansing and the murdering of a substantial part of a group. Otherwise, he feared, the world would wait until an entire group had been wiped out before taking any action.

But this month in Washington these historical truths — about events carried out on another continent, in another century — are igniting controversy among politicians as if the harms were unsubstantiated, local and recent. At stake, of course, is the question of whether the U.S. House of Representatives should offend Turkey by passing a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide of 1915.

All actors in the debate are playing the roles they have played for decades. Turkish General Yasar Buyukanit warned that if the House proceeds with a vote, "our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again." Having recognized the genocide while campaigning for the White House, President George W. Bush nevertheless followed in the footsteps of his Oval Office predecessors, bemoaning the euphemistic "tragic suffering" of Armenians and wheeling out men and women of diplomatic and military rank to argue that the resolution would harm the indispensable U.S.-Turkish relationship. In Congress, Representatives in districts populated by Armenians generally support the measure, while those well cudgeled or coddled by the President or Pentagon don't. Official pressure has led many sponsors of the resolution to withdraw their support.

One feature of the decades-old script is new: the Turkish threats have greater credibility today than in the past. Mainly this is because the U.S. war in Iraq has dramatically increased Turkish leverage over Washington. Some 70% of U.S. air cargo en route to Iraq passes through Turkey, as does about one-third of the fuel used by the U.S. military there. While Turkey may react negatively in the short term, recognition of the genocide is warranted for four reasons. First, the House resolution tells the truth, and the U.S. would be the 24th country to officially acknowledge it. In arguing against the resolution, Bush hasn't dared dispute the facts. An Administration that has shown little regard for the truth is openly urging Congress to join it in avoiding honesty. It is inconceivable that even back in the days when the U.S. prized West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, Washington would have refrained from condemning the Holocaust at Germany's behest."

Genocide Deniers (Inside Higher Education)

"In the buildup to last week’s vote by a House of Representatives committee officially calling for U.S. foreign policy to recognize that a genocide of Armenians took place during World War I, at the behest of the “Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire, a flurry of advertising in American newspapers appeared from Turkey.

The ads discouraged the vote by House members, and called instead for historians to figure out what happened in 1915. The ads quoted such figures as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, as saying: “These historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians.” And State Department officials made similar statements, saying as the vote was about to take place: “We think that the determination of whether the events that happened to ethnic Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire should be a matter for historical inquiry.”

Turkey’s government also has been quick to identify American scholars (there are only a handful, but Turkey knows them all) who back its view that the right approach to 1915 is not to call it genocide, but to figure out what to call it, and what actually took place.

Normally, you might expect historians to welcome the interest of governments in convening scholars to explore questions of scholarship. But in this case, scholars who study the period say that the leaders of Turkey and the United States — along with that handful of scholars — are engaged in a profoundly anti-historical mission: trying to pretend that the Armenian genocide remains a matter of debate instead of being a long settled question. Much of the public discussion of the Congressional resolution has focused on geopolitics: If the full House passes the resolution, will Turkey end its help for U.S. military activities in Iraq?"

EDM 357 on 16 October 2007

As of 16 October 2007, 170 Members of Parliament have recognised the Armenian Genocide by signing EDM 357.

The breakdown of signatures by three major parties is as follows:

89% of Liberal Democrats
24% of Labour
8% of Conservatives

have signed the early day motion.

Currently 27% of Members of Parliament recognise the Armenian Genocide. While impressive progress has been made in raising the awareness and recognition of the Armenian Genocide at Westminster, efforts will be doubled to reach majority support in the House.

Professor Donald Bloxham awarded the 2007 Lemkin Prize for work on the Armenian Genocide

The Institute for the Study of Genocide (New York)is pleased to announce presentation of the fourth biennial Lemkin award to Donald Bloxham for his book, THE GREAT GAME OF GENOCIDE: IMPERIALISM, NATIONALISM, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE OTTOMAN ARMENIANS (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Bloxham says, "The project from which the book evolved originally intended to focus upon Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, and Western acceptance of that denial. But it soon became clear that denial and its accommodation could not be properly understood without knowledge of how the great powers related to the deeds of the Ottoman empire before, during and immediately after the First World War itself." "For nearly a century this genocide has either been ignored or not recognized for what it was. In this book Donald Bloxham provides an explanation for why it happened and why it has subsequently been overlooked, and offers a new interpretation which places the genocide firmly in the context of international history." (OUP).

Donald Bloxham is Professor of Modern History at Edinburgh University, author of Genocide on Trial (Oxford University Press, 2001) and co-author of The Holocaust: Critical Historical Approaches (Manchester University Press, 2005. He is a Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for 2007-2008.

The Lemkin ceremony will be held at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Room 1311 North Hall, 445 West 59 Street, New York from 2PM to 5PM on Friday, November 9, 2007. The formal presentation and talks will be preceded by a reception with refreshments from 2PM to 2:30PM. There will be books available for purchase and signing by the author after the formal ceremony.

The Lemkin award honors Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the concept of genocide and first exponent of a United Nations Genocide Convention. The biennial award recognizes the best book (for non-fiction works published in English) published in the preceding two years which focuses on explanation of genocide, crimes against humanity, state mass killings and gross violations of human rights and strategies to prevent such crimes and violations. Previous recipients of the award include Peter Balakian (2005), Samantha Power (2003) and Alison Des Forges (2000).

BBC Trust's decision expected 30 October 2007

The BBC Trust's Editorial Standards Committee is due to publish its decision on the AGT's complaint against biased reporting on the Armenian Genocide and its commemoration day by BBC News on 30 October 2007.

The complaint was initially made in 2006 and has reached BBC's governing body in August 2007.

Decision of the Committee will be published on AGT's web site as soon as it is received.

U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs recognises the Armenian Genocide

The House of Representatives--

(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; and

(2) calls upon the President in the President's annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.

IAGS writes to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS

October 5, 2007

The Honorable Tom Lantos, Chairman
The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member
House Foreign Affairs Committee
US House of Representatives

Dear Chairman Lantos and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen:

We write to you as the leading international organization of scholars who study genocide. We strongly urge you to pass H. Res. 106.

In passing this resolution the US Congress would not be adjudicating history but instead would be affirming the truth about a genocide that has been overwhelmingly established by decades of documentation and scholarship.

Truth of the Scholarly Record

It is disingenuous of the government of Turkey to use the red herring of a “historians’ commission,” half of whose members would be appointed by the Turkish government, to “study” the facts of what occurred in 1915. As we have made clear in our Open Letters to Prime Minister Erdogan (6/13/05 and 6/12/06), the historical record on the Armenian Genocide is unambiguous. It is proven by foreign office records of the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia, and perhaps most importantly, of Turkey’s World War I allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, as well as by the records of the Ottoman Courts-Martial of 1918-1920, and by decades of scholarship. A “commission of historians” would only serve the interests of Turkish genocide deniers.

The abundance of scholarly evidence led to the unanimous resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Turkish massacres of over one million Armenians from 1915 to 1918 was a crime of genocide.

America’s Own Record

The Joint Congressional Resolution recognizing and commemorating the Armenian Genocide will honor America’s extraordinary Foreign Service Officers (among them Leslie A. Davis, Jesse B. Jackson, and Oscar Heizer) who often risked their lives rescuing Armenian citizens in 1915. They and others left behind some forty thousand pages of reports, now in the National Archives, that document that what happened to the Armenian people was government-planned, systematic extermination—what Raphael Lemkin (the man who coined the word genocide) used in creating the definition.

By passing this resolution, the U.S. Congress would also pay tribute to America’s first international human rights movement. The Foreign Service Officers and prominent individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, and Cleveland Dodge, who did so much to help the Armenians, exemplify America’s legacy of moral leadership.

The parliaments of many countries have affirmed the fact of the Armenian Genocide in unequivocal terms, yet H. Res. 106, a commemorative, non-binding resolution, has faced opposition from those who fear it would undermine US relations with Turkey. It is worth noting that, notwithstanding France’s Armenian Genocide legislation, France and Turkey are engaged in more bilateral trade than ever before. We would not expect the US government to be intimidated by an unreliable ally with a deeply disturbing human rights record, graphically documented in the State Department’s 2007 International Religious Freedom Report on Turkey. We would expect the United States to express its moral and intellectual views, not to compromise its own principles.

The Armenian Genocide is not a controversial issue outside of Turkey. Just as it would be unethical for Germany to interfere with the historical memory of the Holocaust, we feel it is equally unethical for Turkey to interfere with the memory of the Armenian Genocide. Elie Wiesel has repeatedly called Turkey’s denial a double killing, as it strives to kill the memory of the event. We believe the US government should not be party to efforts to kill the memory of a historical fact as profound and important as the genocide of the Armenians, which Hitler used as an example in his plan to exterminate the Jews.

We also believe that security and historical truth are not in conflict, and it is in the interest of the United States to support the principles of human rights that are at the core of American democracy.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton President International Association of Genocide Scholars

EXECUTIVE BOARD:

President, Gregory Stanton Genocide Watch

First Vice-President, Steven Leonard Jacobs University of Alabama

Second Vice-President Alex Hinton Rutgers University

Secretary, Marc I. Sherman Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Israel

Treasurer, Jack Nusan Porter, Newton, MA

ADVISORY COUNCIL:

Joyce Apsel New York University, USA

Peter Balakian, USA Colgate University, USA

Ben Kiernan, USA Yale University, USA

Daniel Feierstein U. of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Charli Carpenter University of Pittsburgh, USA

Henry Theriault Wellesley College, USA

Immediate Past President: Israel W. Charny Institute on Holocaust & Genocide, Jerusalem, Israel

U.S. House Panel To Vote On Armenian Genocide Resolution

A measure to declare that the World War I-era killings of Armenians was genocide is expected to advance in the U.S. Congress next week, despite opposition from the Bush administration and Turkey's warning that its relations with Washington could be badly damaged. Similar measures have been debated in Congress for decades, but have repeatedly been thwarted amid concerns about damaging relations with Turkey, an important NATO ally. Tuesday's announcement by the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee that it would consider the resolution next Wednesday signals that the Democratic leaders, who control the House, support the measure. With that support, the bill stands a good chance of passing in a vote by the full House this time. If the resolution is approved by the committee, it would be up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to decide whether to bring it to the House floor for a vote. While Pelosi has previously expressed support for recognizing the killings as genocide, it is not clear whether she would bring the resolution to a vote. But according to two congressional aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, the committee would not have taken up the resolution without Pelosi's support. The measure is expected to pass in the committee and has widespread support in the full House, should Pelosi allow a vote.