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DENIALIST HISTORIANS DENY THE GENOCIDE BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW THE LAW: GEOFFREY ROBERTSON
18:59, 16 March, 2015
YEREVAN, 16 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. In the heart of Manhattan in Times
Square's Marriot Marquis Hotel, a long-awaited international conference
marking the centennial of the Armenian Genocide opened last Friday
with a presentation by UK human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson,
counsel in a case referring to the Armenian Genocide that went to
the European Court of Human Rights in January.
In his opening presentation, entitled "Responsibility: 100 years of
Human Rights Violations," Robertson called on Turkey to recognise
the crimes carried out against the Armenians under Ottoman rule as
genocide, in other words intended to target the continuing existence
of the Armenians.
In his book "An Inconvenient Genocide: Who now Remembers the
Armenians," Robertson argued that the crimes by which more than a
million Armenians lost their lives under Ottoman rule in 1915 be
defined as genocide.
"As historians don't know the law, it's quite clear that a number of
denialist historians deny the Genocide. They don't understand what
genocide means, and they profess no understanding of the law or have
no experience in applying it, so they are not qualified to answer
the legal question" of whether or not these crimes were genocide,
Robertson commented to the Weekly.
He added that denialist historians think that genocide requires proof
of a written order from the central government at the time such crimes
take place to eliminate all members of a particular group or people
professing a particular religion. They may think there must always
be an intention to kill everyone in the group, rather than part of
the group or to create conditions where such killing is inevitable,
he said.
Robertson noted that annihilating a racial or religious group becomes
a matter of international concern if a country like Turkey seeks to
cover up such crimes by blotting them out of school textbooks or by
prosecuting those who allege them, or, worse, if denial takes the
form of an insistence that they were justified in the first place.
"There can never be justification for genocide, even on the
shoulder-shrugging grounds that it occurred during World War I when
life was cheap and 'military necessity' or 'national security' required
it. Any state that takes the lives of hundreds of thousands of women,
of old men and young children, on the grounds of their race must,
in the absence at least of confession and apology, pay a price,
as long as a century later," Robertson said.
The Conference includes panels on Armenian Genocide Scholarship,
Building Solidarity, Armenian Genocide in US Policy Circles, Attitudes
in Turkey, Individual and Group Reparations, Islamised Armenians,
Denial, Gender and Genocide, and Genocide and Education.
Among the speakers are well-known figures such as Bilgin Ayata,
David Barsamian, David Gaunt, Guillaume Perrier, Israel Charny, Nancy
Krikorian, Richard Hovannissian, Sarah Leah Whitson, Ruken Sengul,
Khatchig Mouradian and others.
The closing panel, on Art and Expression, will include Alexander
Dinelaris, co-writer and winner of an Academy Award for Best Original
Screenplay for the filmBirdman, Chris Bohjalian, author of 17 books
including ten New York Times bestsellers, Eric Boghossian, author
and actor, and Scout Tufankjian, a photojournalist whose work has
been featured inNewsweek, Le Monde, theNew York Times and other
publications.
It had earlier been announced that British writer and Middle East
correspondent for theIndependent newspaper Robert Fisk would be
among the speakers at the Conference. But Fisk, known for his strong
support for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, had cancelled
his previously scheduled appearance as a speaker at a luncheon only
a day before the Conference started, citing unforeseen circumstances
according to Conference organisers.
However, some said that Fisk had cancelled his participation owing to
objections to the Dashnak Party, the Lebanese chapter of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, which is a member of the March 8 Coalition
led by the Shiite Hizbullah Party.
The Conference was organised by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Eastern US Centennial Committee. "It is about the responsibility of
everybody, whether it's the Turkish state, whether it's Armenia, or
whether it's the international community, to acknowledge past crimes
and to intervene when current crimes are still being committed by the
Islamic State, for example, and to prevent future crimes," commented
Khatchig Mouradian, head of the Conference organising committee and
editor of The Armenian Weekly.
Committee co-chair Haig Oshagan said that "responsibility extends
to individuals and nations to know their past and their history
and how to understand the present and figure out the future, so the
historical work is a responsibility to explain the Genocide to the
current generation. It's our duty to understand what happened to our
ancestors and pass it on to the new generations."
"Our demands for reparations are based on the notion of responsibility;
a nation cannot claim impunity for a criminal, and the opposite of
impunity is accountability or responsibility. This has to do with
everything from recognition to reparations, and the foundation is that
Turkey is responsible for these crimes and we will demand reparations
for them."
18:59, 16 March, 2015
YEREVAN, 16 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. In the heart of Manhattan in Times
Square's Marriot Marquis Hotel, a long-awaited international conference
marking the centennial of the Armenian Genocide opened last Friday
with a presentation by UK human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson,
counsel in a case referring to the Armenian Genocide that went to
the European Court of Human Rights in January.
In his opening presentation, entitled "Responsibility: 100 years of
Human Rights Violations," Robertson called on Turkey to recognise
the crimes carried out against the Armenians under Ottoman rule as
genocide, in other words intended to target the continuing existence
of the Armenians.
In his book "An Inconvenient Genocide: Who now Remembers the
Armenians," Robertson argued that the crimes by which more than a
million Armenians lost their lives under Ottoman rule in 1915 be
defined as genocide.
"As historians don't know the law, it's quite clear that a number of
denialist historians deny the Genocide. They don't understand what
genocide means, and they profess no understanding of the law or have
no experience in applying it, so they are not qualified to answer
the legal question" of whether or not these crimes were genocide,
Robertson commented to the Weekly.
He added that denialist historians think that genocide requires proof
of a written order from the central government at the time such crimes
take place to eliminate all members of a particular group or people
professing a particular religion. They may think there must always
be an intention to kill everyone in the group, rather than part of
the group or to create conditions where such killing is inevitable,
he said.
Robertson noted that annihilating a racial or religious group becomes
a matter of international concern if a country like Turkey seeks to
cover up such crimes by blotting them out of school textbooks or by
prosecuting those who allege them, or, worse, if denial takes the
form of an insistence that they were justified in the first place.
"There can never be justification for genocide, even on the
shoulder-shrugging grounds that it occurred during World War I when
life was cheap and 'military necessity' or 'national security' required
it. Any state that takes the lives of hundreds of thousands of women,
of old men and young children, on the grounds of their race must,
in the absence at least of confession and apology, pay a price,
as long as a century later," Robertson said.
The Conference includes panels on Armenian Genocide Scholarship,
Building Solidarity, Armenian Genocide in US Policy Circles, Attitudes
in Turkey, Individual and Group Reparations, Islamised Armenians,
Denial, Gender and Genocide, and Genocide and Education.
Among the speakers are well-known figures such as Bilgin Ayata,
David Barsamian, David Gaunt, Guillaume Perrier, Israel Charny, Nancy
Krikorian, Richard Hovannissian, Sarah Leah Whitson, Ruken Sengul,
Khatchig Mouradian and others.
The closing panel, on Art and Expression, will include Alexander
Dinelaris, co-writer and winner of an Academy Award for Best Original
Screenplay for the filmBirdman, Chris Bohjalian, author of 17 books
including ten New York Times bestsellers, Eric Boghossian, author
and actor, and Scout Tufankjian, a photojournalist whose work has
been featured inNewsweek, Le Monde, theNew York Times and other
publications.
It had earlier been announced that British writer and Middle East
correspondent for theIndependent newspaper Robert Fisk would be
among the speakers at the Conference. But Fisk, known for his strong
support for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, had cancelled
his previously scheduled appearance as a speaker at a luncheon only
a day before the Conference started, citing unforeseen circumstances
according to Conference organisers.
However, some said that Fisk had cancelled his participation owing to
objections to the Dashnak Party, the Lebanese chapter of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, which is a member of the March 8 Coalition
led by the Shiite Hizbullah Party.
The Conference was organised by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Eastern US Centennial Committee. "It is about the responsibility of
everybody, whether it's the Turkish state, whether it's Armenia, or
whether it's the international community, to acknowledge past crimes
and to intervene when current crimes are still being committed by the
Islamic State, for example, and to prevent future crimes," commented
Khatchig Mouradian, head of the Conference organising committee and
editor of The Armenian Weekly.
Committee co-chair Haig Oshagan said that "responsibility extends
to individuals and nations to know their past and their history
and how to understand the present and figure out the future, so the
historical work is a responsibility to explain the Genocide to the
current generation. It's our duty to understand what happened to our
ancestors and pass it on to the new generations."
"Our demands for reparations are based on the notion of responsibility;
a nation cannot claim impunity for a criminal, and the opposite of
impunity is accountability or responsibility. This has to do with
everything from recognition to reparations, and the foundation is that
Turkey is responsible for these crimes and we will demand reparations
for them."