Bob Spink MP calls for an independent inquiry into the Armenian Genocide

Following publication of Geoffrey Robertson QC's legal opinion on the Armenian Genocide, Bob Spink MP introduced EDM 247 calling for an independent inquiry into the Armenian Genocide:

"That this House supports Turkey's application for membership of the EU; but is concerned about the welfare of thousands of Crypto-Armenians in Turkey; notes the substance of Geoffrey Robertson QC's legal opinion on the Armenian Genocide; calls for an independent inquiry into the revelations of that opinion; and urges the Government to acknowledge that the events which befell the Armenians and Assyrians of Turkey of 1915 amounted to genocide."

Former IAGS Presidents Consider Historical Commission an Attempt to Deny Armenian Genocide

The former presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent the following letter to the Turkish Prime Minister:

Dear Prime Minister Erdogan:

The recent signing of protocols by the governments of Armenia and Turkey that was brokered by leading states of the international community marks the beginning of a  process that would lead to establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Constituencies in both countries find some or all of the protocols problematic. We the former presidents of the  International Association of Genocide Scholars write to you to express our concern about one of them: the establishment of a historical commission to study the fate of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

We are sending you this amended version of the Open Letter we wrote you in June 2005 to reiterate our objection to your insistence that there be a historical commission, in which Turkey would be involved. Because Turkey has denied the Armenian Genocide for the past nine decades, and currently under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, public affirmation of the Genocide is a crime, it would seem impossible for Turkey to be part of a process that would assess whether or not Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915.

Outside of your government, there is no doubt about the facts of the Armenian Genocide, therefore our concern is that your demand for a historical commission is political sleight of hand designed to deny those facts. Turkey has, in fact, shown no willingness to accept impartial judgments made by outside commissions. Five years ago, the Turkish members of the Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission pulled out of the commission after the arbitrator, the International Center for Transitional Justice, rendered an assessment that the events of 1915 were genocide.

And, Prime Minister Erdogan, you have repeatedly stated that even if a historical commission found that the Armenian case is genocide, Turkey would ignore the finding.

As William Schabas, the current president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, said in his letter to you and President Sarkisian, “acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide must be the starting point of any ‘impartial historical commission,’ not one of its possible conclusions.”

Our previous letter, which was unanimously approved by the members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, lays out the consensus among historians as to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. We believe the integrity of scholarship and the ethics of historical memory are at stake.

HELEN FEIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF GENOCIDE

ROGER W. SMITH, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF GOVERNMENT, COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY IN VIRGINIA

FRANK CHALK, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL, AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE MONTREAL INSTITUTE FOR GENOCIDE STUDIES

JOYCE APSEL, PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

ROBERT MELSON, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, PURDUE UNIVERSITY, AND PROFESSOR OF HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES, CLARK UNIVERSITY

ISRAEL W. CHARNY, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PSYCHOLOGY, HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE ON THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE

GREGORY STANTON,  DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS, MARY WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, VIRGINIA, and PRESIDENT, GENOCIDE WATCH

Geoffrey Robertson QC's legal opinion on the Armenian Genocide

"The result of my examination of the advice provided by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to Her Majesty's Government, and reproduced by ministers in parliamentary answers drafted over the past decade by the FCO, is that this advice reflects neither the law of genocide nor the demonstrable facts of the massacres in 1915 - 16, and has been calculated to mislead parliament into believing that there has been an assessment of evidence and an exercise of judgment on that evidence."

"The truth is that throughout the life of the present Labour government and (so the FCO admits) throughout previous governments, there has been no proper or candid appraisal of 1915 events condemned by HMG at the time and immediately afterwards in terms that anticipate the modern definition of genocide and which were referred to by the drafters of the Genocide Convention as a prime example of the kind of atrocity that would be covered by this new international crime. HMG has consistently (at least until 2007) wrongly maintained both that the decision is one for historians and that historians are divided on the subject, ignoring the fact that the decision is one for legal judgment and no reputable historian could possibly deny the central facts of the deportations and the racial and religious motivations behind the deaths of a significant proportion of the Armenian people. HMG has also maintained the fiction that it is somehow contrary to legal practice to apply the description “genocide” to events that occurred prior to 1948. This and other mistaken or illogical arguments have been made, so the internal policy memoranda reveal, in a hitherto successful effort not to upset the “neuralgic” Turkish government. The dubious ethics involved in this approach have been acknowledged (once, back in 1999) but there appears to be no interest in establishing the truth of the matter or re-asserting the position that HMG took at the time, or in understanding (let alone applying) the modern law of genocide as it has emerged from decisions of the ICJ, the ICTY and the ICTR. There is no recognition at all of the importance of nations acknowledging their past crimes against humanity, or of supporting the decendents of victims who still, almost a century later, have to live with the consequences."

"I consider that parliament has been routinely misinformed, by ministers who have recited FCO briefs without questioning their accuracy. HMG’s real and only policy has been to evade truthful answers to questions about the Armenian Genocide, because the truth would discomfort the Turkish government. It can be predicted that any future question on the subject will be met with the same meaningless formula about “insufficiently unequivocal evidence,” disguising the simple fact that HMG will not now come to terms with an issue on which it was once so volubly certain, namely that the Armenian massacres were a “crime against humanity” which should never be forgiven or forgotten. Times change, but as other civilised nations recognise, the universal crimes of genocide and torture have no statute of limitations. Judge Balthazar Garzon, in opening his investigation of the crimes of the Franco era, declared that their perpetrators should have no posthumous impunity: the same might be said of the authors of the Armenian genocide."

Geoffrey Robertson QC is founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers. He is a 'distinguished jurist' member of the United Nations Justice Council, having served as the first President of the Special Court in Sierra Leone. He has argued many landmark cases in media, constitutional and criminal law in the European Court of Human Rights, the House of Lords, the Privy Council and Commonwealth courts. He has recently appeared in the Court of Final Appeal for Hong Kong, the Supreme Court of Malaysia, the Fiji Court of Appeal, the High Court of Australia and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

To download the full text of the legal opinion please click here.