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Armenian Genocide Rememberance Day Bill in the UK Parliament

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  • Armenian Genocide Rememberance Day Bill in the UK Parliament

    Armenia Solidarity and Nor Serount Cultural Association Press Release
    c/o The Temple of Peace, Cardiff
    07718982732
    [email protected]


    Ar menian Genocide Rememberance Day Bill in the UK Parliament

    We are pleased that the bill by the Member of Parliament Andrew
    Dismore, who has helped us so much in the past is scheduled to be given
    a second reading today, (16th October). This is the first time ever that
    a bill which is potentially destined for a vote has reached so far.

    Sixty-three private bills by Members of Paliuament are scheduled to
    be debated today, of which the Armenian Genocude Day bill is down at
    number five. Even though it came very high in the list, the procedure
    of Parliament means that usually there is only time to debate two or
    three such bills and all the other bills will "fall" The fact that so
    little time is available for parliament to debate such important bills
    is all the more appalling as ninety years have elapsed since the
    "Turkish Rule in Armenia" debate in the House of Lords in 1919. Ninety
    years ago, the government made promises which were subsequently broken,
    and as if to excuse themselves, the present British government even deny
    the facts on which the promises were made.(note that Earl Curzon , for
    the government, even then had little time to stay in the debate. Now,
    after waiting for ninety years, there is still not enough time to debate
    the issue.)

    Details of the bill are given below:

    "Armenian Genocide Rememberance Day Bill. Mr. Andrew Dismore, supported
    by John Austin, Mr. Virendra Sharma, Clive Efford, Ms Karen Buck and Rob
    Marris, presented a Bill to introduce a national day to learn about and
    remember the Armenian genocide. "

    Parliamentarians will be sent this to remind them of the
    government's past promises to the Armenians,containing their recognition
    of Turkey's central involvement in the Genocide

    TURKISH RULE IN ARMENIA.

    House of Lords Debate 17 December 1919 vol 38 cc279-300
    THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY rose to call attention to the
    sufferings of the Christian refugees, Armenian, Nestorian, and
    Chaldæan, who are still prevented from returning to their homes by the
    Turkish troops who are occupying the districts from which they were
    driven, and to the repeated declarations made by the Government that all
    Turkish rule should cease in Armenia and the other districts referred
    to; and to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can give any
    information as to the steps taken or proposed in relation thereto.

    The Blue Book.

    "The appalling stories of wholesale massacre, of expulsion of great
    populations from their homes under conditions which could only be
    described as in most cases slowly dragged-out massacre, are set before
    us in incident after incident, showing what has happened on a scale so
    vast as is scarcely credible in our own time or, indeed, in any time.
    Every one who studies the subject at once begins to ask himself: Are the
    outrages which are here described the misdeeds of lawless ruffians who
    are out of hand and incapable of knowing what mercy or humanity means,
    or can they be the deliberate acts of a Government itself? On that
    question very large issues would necessarily turn. Unhappily the
    Blue-book leaves the impartial reader in no doubt whatever as to the
    answer which must be given. The book is no mere string of incidents. It
    gives the coherent story of these years, introduced and supplemented by
    narratives of the past and summaries of what has happened in the
    present which enable us by the lucidity, the range, and the clear
    arrangement of the whole, to deal with that question without hesitation
    and to arrive at the conclusion which is, I think, inevitable. No one
    reading it carefully but must be convinced, not, I will say, of the
    Turkish Government's complicity in these matters, but of its authorship,
    the actual authorship of these unspeakable outrages.

    At the very outset of the war a deliberate plan was adopted, it is
    perfectly clear, by the Turkish Government for dealing with these long
    oppressed peoples, peoples in their various groups whose courage, whose
    loyalty to their Christian faith and, in some cases, whose industry aid
    grit had enabled them to hold their own for centuries and centuries in
    face of oppression, and poverty, anti misrule. The Government decided
    upon a cold-blooded plan of a double character. It was first to be a
    plan of quite deliberate massacre on a large scale, and it was next to
    be a plan of so-called deportation from the occupied regions which, in
    very many cases, merely meant massacre in a deferred degree.

    Different regions were taken in order. The records which are here
    brought to light show that there were telegrams at the same time sent to
    the various parts of the Empire so that the massacre, if it was to be a
    massacre, should take place at the same time in different places. The
    deportations were carefully arranged by a plan which makes it utterly
    impossible to suppose that they were the acts of local governors, or
    local authorities, or that they emanated from any other source than
    headquarters, whether or no those headquarters had an identity different
    from that which belonged to the Turkish Government.

    What took place is described in this book by eye-witnesses.
    Narrative after narrative gives it in detail. These are not for the most
    part the accounts of victims who had survived; they are narratives by
    calm, competent, highly-skilled observers, familiar with the country,
    familiar with the people, and incapable of misrepresenting what they
    saw. Americans, Germans-I will note Germans very markedly-and English
    observers as well. These all support, with practical unanimity, the
    stories given by those victims who had survived, whose records, had they
    not been thus supported, might very unfairly have been judged as not
    likely to be correctly or temperately given.

    I believe that the story of these years is really an outrage on
    civilisation without historical parallel in the world. I do not believe
    that in the wildest barbarities recorded in history, including those of
    the days of Tamerlane, you would be able to exceed, if you could
    parallel, the accounts that are here given. And these can be, as I have
    said, undoubtedly traced, not to the outrageous conduct of undisciplined
    hordes, but to the deliberate plan and scheme of a Government with which
    you are supposed to have been on friendly terms and in alliance for many
    purposes. After all the distractions which the war has brought into the
    mind of men all over the world in contemplating contemporary history, is
    it conceivable that we are going to allow these facts to be forgotten;
    or, if we do not allow them to be forgotten, that we are going to allow
    conditions to arise again during which their repetition can be possible?
    That seems to me to be a question which ought to be, and must be, asked
    at once. ..

    It is, of course, difficult to know how to deal with the question
    and that is a matter which is not within my province or within my power
    to handle in any way at all. No one contends that it is a very easy
    matter to know what ought to happen next, and hardly any one contends
    that we should suppress the Turk in Asia Minor proper; that is in the
    peninsula west of a line running from Samsoon in the north to
    Alexandretta in the south. West of that line we admit that Asia Minor is
    a region under Turkish rule, and presumably it is to continue to prevail
    with whatever checks or supervision are practicable. No one suggests
    that they should be suppressed in this region. But east of that line the
    whole conditions are entirely different. That region has never
    historically belonged properly to Turkey; is not inhabited by the
    Turkish races, nor are the Turks as numerous there, as are other races.
    .........

    It has been definitely promised that whatever flag it is which flies
    over these regions in the future the actual control must never again be
    in Turkish hands. I will not trouble your Lordships with quotations but
    I will give two from the Prime Minister himself. Speaking in December
    20, 1917, in the House of Commons the Prime Minister said this- What
    will happen to Mesopotamia must be left to the Peace Congress when it
    meets; but there is one thing that will never happen; it will never be
    restored to the blasting tyranny of the Turk. At best he was a trustee
    of this far famed land on behalf of Ah! what a trustee! He has been
    false to his trust, and his trusteeship must be given over to more
    competent and more equitable hands chosen by the Congress which will
    settle the affairs of the world. That same observation applies to
    Armenia, the land soaked with blood of innocents massacred by the people
    who were bound to protect them. Speaking a little later the Prime
    Minister said- Outside Europe we believe the same principles should be
    applied. While we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire
    in the home lands of the Turkish race with its capital at
    Consantinople-the passage between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea
    being internationalised and neutralised-Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia,
    Syria, and Palestine are, in our judgment, entitled to a recognition of
    their separate national conditions. What the exact form of that
    recognition in each particular case should be need not be here
    discussed, beyond stating that it would be impossible to restore to
    their former sovereignty the territories to which I have just referred.
    I ask now, What are we to understand as to their fulfilment? I do not
    believe I appeal to an unsympathetic tribunal. I apologise for having
    detained your Lordships so long but the point raised in the question had
    to be made clear; it is one which deserves attention and must not pass
    from the memory of civilised people. It is a matter of vital import to
    the honour of humanity and the good faith and wellbeing of the world."

    § THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF
    KEDLESTON) (for the government)

    My Lords, I do not want to stand between the House and my noble
    friend Lord Bryce, but, I have an engagement which compels me to go away
    presently. No one will dispute the extreme gravity or the poignant
    tragedy of many of the incidents which the moat rev. Primate has placed
    before us. He has recapitulated from the Blue-book many of the most
    terrible incidents in the long career of bloodshed, atrocity, and crime
    which has disfigured what I hope will be the dying days of the Turkish
    Empire in those parts of Asia to which he had alluded. . .....

    ... as regards the Assyrians who lived before and who are willing to
    live again in the areas which belong to the old Turkish Empire, either
    to place them in an enclave adjacent to the territories under our
    control, so that they may be under our wing and within easy reach of our
    protection, or, if we provide a home for them in their former home lands
    or further afield among the Kurdish peoples, to try to make such
    arrangements for them as may secure their safe and decent existence.

    The most Rev. Primate alluded to the different declarations that
    have been made at various times since we went into the country by
    responsible spokesmen of His Majesty's Government. He quoted in
    particular two declarations made in the course of last year or the year
    before by the Prime Minister. By those declarations we stand. They have
    never been departed from there. They do not express the sentiments, the
    aspirations, or the intentions of ourselves alone. They are shared by
    all our Allies. And, my Lords I hope that many months-I may even go
    further and say that I hope that many weeks-will not now elapse before
    the Allied Powers in Conference are able seriously to come to a solution
    of the Turkish problem, too long delayed already, and bring it to a
    satisfactory conclusion.

    VISCOUNT BRYCE

    ..... They (the Armenian refugees) cannot return until something is done
    to check the Turkish bands which are still ravishing the country. There
    are, I am informed, no regular Turkish forces now in Armenia proper,
    that is to say, in Armenia to the east of the Taurus Mountains, nor in
    Cilicia, but there are wandering bands-the remnants of the former
    Turkish forces-and all the bad characters who always come to front where
    a country is in complete disorder, and these are so numerous and so well
    armed that it would be unsafe for the refugees at present to return.

    I believe that by that means, by means of the exercise of diplomatic
    pressure, by sending a force into the country, which need not be a very
    large force, to see that these bands are suppressed, it will be possible
    to enable the refugees to return in safety.

    That brings me to say a word about the Treaty itself. The first
    condition of any Treaty to be made with the Turks is that they shall
    entirely evacuate what is known as Armenia. I share the view which was
    expressed by the most rev. Primate that there is no reason why a Turkish
    Sultan should not continue to reign in those parts of Asia Minor where
    there is a majority of the Muslim population. The Muslim population is
    in the large majority along the north coast of Asia Minor, and through
    most parts of the central plateau, and there a Sultan may remain, and if
    anybody likes-if he can obtain recognition from the Mahomedan world as
    Caliph-he may remain as Caliph also. But what I believe the public of
    this country will insist upon, and in fact, what public opinion must
    insist upon when it knows the facts and realises those facts upon which
    the most rev. Primate dwelt-the immense scale and the circumstances of
    horror which attended these massacres and which have shown once again
    how utterly unfit the Turk is to exercise powers over persons of a
    different faith and race-is that there shall be no more Turkish rule in
    Armenia nor in those other regions, Chaldæan and Assyrian, in which
    the massacres have been perpetrated.

    Some other declarations-those made by the present Prime Minister-have
    been referred to by the most rev. Primate. I could if it were necessary
    give other declarations-declarations made by Mr. Balfour on behalf of
    the Government, declarations made by Lord Robert Cecil on behalf of the
    Government., declarations made by M. Clemenceau who also pledged France
    to secure liberation of the Armenians. And therefore I am very glad to
    know that the noble Earl, in the words which he spoke just now, declared
    that His Majesty's Government-and he said he spoke for the Allies
    also-stand by those declarations, and intend to fulfil them. I am sure
    the House will note with satisfaction that declaration, and will feel
    sure that His Majesty's Government will carry it out. But I want to
    press this point upon it, that that must be taken to mean the regions in
    which the Muslim population is not in a large majority, such as the
    centre of Asia Minor, and that the declaration must be taken to include
    all the countries to the east of the Taurus Mountains, Cilicia, and the
    six vilayets of Armenia, and that it is not only for the Republic at
    Erivan that independence is to be promised, but that that independence
    is to belong to all the regions which historically belong to the
    Armenian part of Western Asia.

    I need only remind your Lordships that if you desire to have any other
    view of the conduct of the Turks and the character of those massacres in
    addition to that which the Blue-book presents, to which the most rev.
    Primate has referred, you will find it in the book of Mr. Morgenthau,
    the American Ambassador at Constantinople during the period of the
    massacres. He tells us himself that he constantly went to Enver and
    Talaat, who are the two chiefs of the Committee of Union and Progress
    and the persons chiefly responsible for planning and carrying out the
    massacres. He represented to them that the world would be outraged if
    those things continued, and he tried for the same purpose to enlist the
    sympathy of the German Ambassador, Wangenheim. He describes there how
    Talaat and Enver did not attempt to conceal the massacres, did not deny
    what their policy of extermination was. They did it all with a
    deliberate purpose; they were supported by the other members of the
    Committee of Union and Progress, and not a word was said amongst the
    Turks against these massacres.

    I.
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