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The Daily Beast
Jan 29 2015
Mrs. Clooney Takes On the Armenian Genocide Deniers
Can the celebrity human-rights lawyer buck the tide and get
recognition of the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians?
LONDON -- This time Amal Clooney is taking on one of the greatest war
crimes of the 20th century.
The star human-rights lawyer is appearing at the European Court of
Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, this week in the name of the
victims of the Armenian genocide, a slaughter that saw some 1.5
million people murdered 100 years ago.
Adolf Hitler would later claim the unprecedented massacre as an
inspiration in his brutal quest for lebensraum, but even today Turkey
claims the numbers have been inflated and insists that those who
perished died in the midst of a great war, not a systematic genocide.
One such outspoken Turkish politician was convicted in a Swiss court
in 2008 after giving an inflammatory speech in Switzerland, a country
that shares Germany's legal ban on denying genocide. His conviction
was later overturned during an appeal, in which lawyers representing
the Turkish government argued that the Armenian genocide was not a
matter of "general consensus" like the Holocaust.
Enter Amal Clooney, who is demanding that the European Court of Human
Rights recognize the suffering of the Armenians. The tiny land-locked
country, found in the mountains west of Azerbaijan, has rarely been
championed by such an influential ambassador, assuming you don't count
Kim Kardashian, whose great-great grandparents fled the genocide.
Despite the drab municipal setting in the notoriously dull French city
of Strasbourg, Clooney was greeted outside the court by the kind of
paparazzi presence you might see at a Kardashian product launch. The
red coat she had worn en route from Los Angeles had already inspired
reams of media coverage, so The Telegraph's Brussels correspondent
asked what she thought of the fashion critiques. She laughed and
replied: "I'm wearing Ede & Ravenscroft." Not a fashion house, Ede &
Ravenscroft, which describes itself as the world's oldest tailor, is
Britain's leading producer of graduation gowns and legal robes.
Clooney's boss, former UN appeals judge Geoffrey Robertson, who writes
for The Daily Beast, is one of the foremost experts on the Armenian
genocide, which he has covered in two books. An Inconvenient Genocide:
Who Now Remembers the Armenians? was published last year.
He appears delighted by his protégée's ability to generate media
interest in his legal battles. The founder of Doughty Street Chambers
said he was pleased by coverage of her court appearance. "It is not
about white gloves or yachts," he said. "It puts the record straight:
She is a human-rights lawyer."
Her husband, actor George Clooney, has also added the weight of his
celebrity to one of Robertson and Amal's other legal campaigns: to
return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
Clooney was expected in court Thursday to continue the case against
Dogu Perinçek, the chairman of the Turkish Workers' Party. She said
the court's decision to overturn Perinçek's conviction for genocide
denial was "simply wrong."
"It cast doubt on the reality of genocide that Armenian people
suffered a century ago," she said. "Armenia must have its day in
court. The stakes could not be higher for the Armenian people."
Perinçek's guilt was overturned in a 2013 European Court of Human
Rights ruling on the grounds of freedom of speech. Clooney said it was
hypocritical of the Turkish government to use such a defense "because
of its disgraceful record on freedom of expression."
She will ask the court for permission to present overwhelming evidence
that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide under cover of the First
World War. She will produce photographs from the time that show
concentration camps, beheadings, and burnt bodies. France, Great
Britain, and Russia issued a joint condemnation in May 1915 against
the "crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization." Only Turkey
has continued to deny that a genocide took place, although the
extermination of the Armenians has never assumed its rightful place
among the most notorious acts of human cruelty.
In a 1939 note addressing his decision to invade Poland and wipe out
the remaining Poles, Hitler reasoned that the world seemed to have
quickly forgiven the extraordinary act of Turkish barbarism. "I have
placed my death-head formations in readiness--for the present only in
the East--with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without
compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and
language. Only thus shall we gain the living space ["lebensraum"]
which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?"
Clooney and Robertson hope that all over the world, people will once
again speak of the Armenians.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/29/mrs-clooney-takes-on-the-armenian-genocide-deniers.html
Jan 29 2015
Mrs. Clooney Takes On the Armenian Genocide Deniers
Can the celebrity human-rights lawyer buck the tide and get
recognition of the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians?
LONDON -- This time Amal Clooney is taking on one of the greatest war
crimes of the 20th century.
The star human-rights lawyer is appearing at the European Court of
Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, this week in the name of the
victims of the Armenian genocide, a slaughter that saw some 1.5
million people murdered 100 years ago.
Adolf Hitler would later claim the unprecedented massacre as an
inspiration in his brutal quest for lebensraum, but even today Turkey
claims the numbers have been inflated and insists that those who
perished died in the midst of a great war, not a systematic genocide.
One such outspoken Turkish politician was convicted in a Swiss court
in 2008 after giving an inflammatory speech in Switzerland, a country
that shares Germany's legal ban on denying genocide. His conviction
was later overturned during an appeal, in which lawyers representing
the Turkish government argued that the Armenian genocide was not a
matter of "general consensus" like the Holocaust.
Enter Amal Clooney, who is demanding that the European Court of Human
Rights recognize the suffering of the Armenians. The tiny land-locked
country, found in the mountains west of Azerbaijan, has rarely been
championed by such an influential ambassador, assuming you don't count
Kim Kardashian, whose great-great grandparents fled the genocide.
Despite the drab municipal setting in the notoriously dull French city
of Strasbourg, Clooney was greeted outside the court by the kind of
paparazzi presence you might see at a Kardashian product launch. The
red coat she had worn en route from Los Angeles had already inspired
reams of media coverage, so The Telegraph's Brussels correspondent
asked what she thought of the fashion critiques. She laughed and
replied: "I'm wearing Ede & Ravenscroft." Not a fashion house, Ede &
Ravenscroft, which describes itself as the world's oldest tailor, is
Britain's leading producer of graduation gowns and legal robes.
Clooney's boss, former UN appeals judge Geoffrey Robertson, who writes
for The Daily Beast, is one of the foremost experts on the Armenian
genocide, which he has covered in two books. An Inconvenient Genocide:
Who Now Remembers the Armenians? was published last year.
He appears delighted by his protégée's ability to generate media
interest in his legal battles. The founder of Doughty Street Chambers
said he was pleased by coverage of her court appearance. "It is not
about white gloves or yachts," he said. "It puts the record straight:
She is a human-rights lawyer."
Her husband, actor George Clooney, has also added the weight of his
celebrity to one of Robertson and Amal's other legal campaigns: to
return the Elgin Marbles to Greece.
Clooney was expected in court Thursday to continue the case against
Dogu Perinçek, the chairman of the Turkish Workers' Party. She said
the court's decision to overturn Perinçek's conviction for genocide
denial was "simply wrong."
"It cast doubt on the reality of genocide that Armenian people
suffered a century ago," she said. "Armenia must have its day in
court. The stakes could not be higher for the Armenian people."
Perinçek's guilt was overturned in a 2013 European Court of Human
Rights ruling on the grounds of freedom of speech. Clooney said it was
hypocritical of the Turkish government to use such a defense "because
of its disgraceful record on freedom of expression."
She will ask the court for permission to present overwhelming evidence
that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide under cover of the First
World War. She will produce photographs from the time that show
concentration camps, beheadings, and burnt bodies. France, Great
Britain, and Russia issued a joint condemnation in May 1915 against
the "crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization." Only Turkey
has continued to deny that a genocide took place, although the
extermination of the Armenians has never assumed its rightful place
among the most notorious acts of human cruelty.
In a 1939 note addressing his decision to invade Poland and wipe out
the remaining Poles, Hitler reasoned that the world seemed to have
quickly forgiven the extraordinary act of Turkish barbarism. "I have
placed my death-head formations in readiness--for the present only in
the East--with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without
compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and
language. Only thus shall we gain the living space ["lebensraum"]
which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?"
Clooney and Robertson hope that all over the world, people will once
again speak of the Armenians.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/29/mrs-clooney-takes-on-the-armenian-genocide-deniers.html