Baroness Cox: British Government should recognise Armenian Genocide

Baroness Cox writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her oral question on the Armenian Genocide

I am asking HMG whether it will reconsider its position on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide – sadly, without any hope of a change in the British government's consistent policy of refusal to acknowledge the truth.
However, the question is timely for three reasons:

1. The recent recognition by the Swedish Parliament of the state-organised massacres of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish authorities, beginning in 1915, as genocide – the latest in a long line of Parliaments and other official bodies, such as the Vatican, to do so.

2. The publication last October of 'Was there an Armenian Genocide? Geoffrey Robertson QC's opinion with reference to Foreign and Commonwealth Office documents which show how British ministers, Parliament and people have been misled'.

3. This year marks the 95th anniversary of the beginning of the genocide and recognition is long overdue. Every genocide which remains unrecognised is, in effect, condoned – and can serve as an encouragement to other potential perpetrators of subsequent genocides. This was most infamously illustrated by Hitler's reference to the Armenian Genocide before he embarked on the extension of the Holocaust in Poland: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Robert Fisk: Living proof of the Armenian genocide

"It's only a small grave, a rectangle of cheap concrete marking it out, blessed by a flourish of wild yellow lilies. Inside are the powdered bones and skulls and bits of femur of up to 300 children, Armenian orphans of the great 1915 genocide who died of cholera and starvation as the Turkish authorities tried to "Turkify" them in a converted Catholic college high above Beirut. But for once, it is the almost unknown story of the surviving 1,200 children – between three and 15 years old – who lived in the crowded dormitory of this ironically beautiful cut-stone school that proves that the Turks did indeed commit genocide against the Armenians in 1915."

"Barack Obama and his pliant Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton – who are now campaigning so pitifully to prevent the US Congress acknowledging that the Ottoman Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians was a genocide – should come here to this Lebanese hilltop village and hang their heads in shame. For this is a tragic, appalling tale of brutality against small and defenceless children whose families had already been murdered by Turkish forces at the height of the First World War, some of whom were to recall how they were forced to grind up and eat the skeletons of their dead fellow child orphans in order to survive starvation."

David Miller on the Armenian Genocide denial in the UK

David Miller, the former British ambassador to Armenia, was one of the distinguished speakers at the London School of Economics screening of "The Blue Book", a British documentary about the ongoing Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide. The film and discussion drew an audience of over 100 students and staff. Mr Miller was clearly disturbed by the documentary by Gagik Karageuzian and the levels at which denial still runs deep in modern day Turkey. He engaged the Blue Book issue (a 1916 British parliamentary publication which the Turkish government falsely calls a forgery) and summarised Turkish tactics on Armenian issues, including the Turkish stance on the recently signed Protocols between Yerevan and Ankara, as bullying.

Miller went on to state that he did not think the British Foreign Office would recognise the Armenian Genocide on its own initiative. This was not due to a lack of evidence because, as he suggested, the Foreign Office knew very well about the Armenian Genocide from its own archives. He saw the British non-recognition as part of the sad fact that Great Britain had a record of appeasing dictatorships and powerful states in its national interests.

Miller then gave an example of what he meant. In 1940 over 20,000 Polish prisoners of war and civilians were murdered in cold blood at Katyn forest by Soviet troops on the orders of Joseph Stalin. The Soviets hid these killings, and then blamed the Germans who discovered the corpses in 1943. The British (and Americans), who knew the truth about the Katyn massacre as early as 1940, remained silent about it. It was not until 1990, when the Russian government itself recognised these mass executions by Soviet troops that the British Foreign Office also spoke up. 

So, when did the speaker think the Foreign Office might recognise the Armenian Genocide? Only "when Turkey recognises it" was the response. 

The screening of "The Blue Book" at the London School of Economics was organised by the LSE SU Armenian Society. The speakers were Lord Avebury, David Miller and Ara Sarafian.

Robert Fisk: Someone remembers this atrocity at last – to Obama's dismay

Once more we have to forget the Armenian Holocaust – the first of the 20th century – in order to appease the Turks. Bill Clinton did it. 

George W Bush spinelessly caved in to the Turkish generals. And now our favourite Nobel prize winner – another brave president who promised to acknowledge the Armenian genocide if he was elected and then declined to do so – went whinging and whining to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington and pleaded with them not to tell the truth about the savage rape and murder of 1.5 million Armenian civilians by the Turks in 1915. Good for the committee that it did not give in. But it will do no good. 

Sure, the Turkish ambassador has been recalled from Washington in a huff. But equally certain is that there will be no vote on the genocide by the full House of Representatives. And if there is, there'll never be a vote in the Senate. Obama will help see to that. The man who wanted change doesn't want change on the little matter of a genocide that led directly to the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews. 

The events in Washington prove a few things. The Armenian American community have a more powerful and wealthier lobby than ever before. More seriously – for the Turks – is that this year Turkey did not have the Israeli lobby behind it. In the past, Israel, which disgracefully claims that the Armenian Holocaust was not a genocide, has supported its close ally Turkey. But this year, Israel and Turkey have fallen out and the Israelis are still miffed at Turkey's condemnation of the bloodbath in Gaza. 

The Turks sent their generals to bully Bush last time round. This time, the Turkish Foreign Minister warned that "Turkish-US ties are going through a very important phase in which they need strategic co-operation at the highest level in their history." The message is simple. Acknowledge the genocide, and the US will lose its airbases in Turkey and the Turkish roads its military convoys use into Iraq. 

The fact, unfortunately, is that these roads are the very highways down which the Armenians were sent on their death marches in 1915. That's not mentioned, of course. Our faithful Turkish ally might even pack up its support for the US in Afghanistan, where they are helping fight "Obama's war". But Robert Gates is still in Washington to remind congressmen what he said last year; that America needed "those roads and so on". Well, let's just hope the American troops don't halt their convoys and dig in the fields around those roads in the coming years. The skeletons are still there in their tens of thousands. 

One wonders what would happen if Germany suddenly decided that the Nazi Holocaust was not a genocide. Would Chancellor Merkel get away with it? Would Obama lobby that Germany should be allowed to get away with such an obscenity? Perhaps it's worth remembering that in 1939, Hitler asked his generals – before setting off into Poland to murder the millions of Jews in eastern Europe – a simple question: "Who now remembers the Armenians?" Well, Hitler got the answer he would have wanted from Obama this week.