Serj Tankian-Yes, It's GENOCIDE

Armenian Genocide by turks in 1915

What is Genocide?

The term Genocide was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, whose family was one of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust. By defining this term, Lemkin sought to describe Nazi politics of systematic murder, violence and atrocities committed against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Combing ‘geno,’ from the Greek word for race or tribe, with ‘cide,’ from the Latin word for killing, he created the word ‘Genocide’. The following year, the International Military Tribunal at Nurenberg charged top Nazi officials with crimes against humanity. Although, the word Genocide was included in the indictment, it was as a descriptive and not as a legal term. 

On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. See whole text  

The Convention defines Genocide as an international crime, which signatory nations undertake to prevent and punish. According to the Convention, Genocide is one of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

a.     Killing members of the group; 

b.     Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 

c.     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

d.     Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

e.     Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

After the adoption of the convention some scholars have suggested other more inclusive definitions. 

In 1959 Pieter Drost, a legal scholar defined Genocide as “The deliberate destruction of physical life of individual human beings by reason of their membership of any human collectivity as such”. 

Israel Charny, the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide in two volumes, suggests that “Genocide in the generic sense is the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims”. 

The UN convention does not include the killing of the members of political groups in the definition of Genocide, but many genocide scholars argued for the inclusion of that point in the definition. The prominent Genocide scholar and sociologist Leo Cuper noted that in the contemporary world, political differences are at least as significant a basis for massacre and annihilation as racial, national, ethnic or religious differences. In response to the omission of political groups from the Convention definition of Genocide, Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff have coined the new term Politicide. 

in Turkish click here

What is the Armenian Genocide? 

The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during WWI is defined as the Armenian Genocide. 

Those massacres were perpetrated throughout different regions of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turkish Government which was in power at the time. 

The first international reaction to the violence resulted in a joint statement by France, Russia and Great Britain, in May 1915, where the Turkish atrocities directed against the Armenian people was defined as “new crime against humanity and civilization” agreeing that the Turkish government must be punished for committing such crimes. 

Why was the Armenian Genocide perpetrated? 

When WWI erupted, the Young Turk government, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of Pan Turkism – the establishment of a mega Turkish empire comprising of all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia extending to China, intending also to Turkify all ethnic minorities of the empire. The Armenian population became the main obstacle standing in the way of the realization of this policy. 

Although the decision for the deportation of all Armenians from the Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) was adopted in late 1911, the Young Turks used WWI as a suitable opportunity for its implementation. 

How many people died in the Armenian Genocide? 

There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of WWI. Approximately one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. Another half million found shelter abroad. 

The mechanism of implementation 

Genocide is the organized killing of a people for the express purpose of putting an end to their collective existence. Because of its scope, genocide requires central planning and an internal machinery to implement. This makes genocide the quintessential state crime, as only a government has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction. 

On 24th of April in 1915, the first phase of the

HIN JUGHA

The largest khachkar cemetary in the world was located in Jugha (located today in Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan). The numbers were vastly reduced from the approximately 20,000 that once stood during Soviet times to a mere few thousand, and after independence, Azerbaijan began to systematically destroy them. After an international outcry, the destruction was halted a few years, until 2005 when the entire cemetary was bulldozed completely clear.   Click here and read more about Hin Jugha 

Hin Jugha:  armenian medieval cemetery, khachkars

WE REMEMBER

SUMGAIT 1988 February 28
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BY AZERBEIJAN

Armenian Genocide Museum launches website about Azerbaijani capital

The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute has launched a unique website featuring the history and cultural life of the Armenian community in the Azeri capital.

The new website available in three languages -Armenian, Russian and English- can be accessed at www.baku.am.

It contains numerous photos and postcards portraying the Armenian families of Baku and several buildings belonging to Armenians, as well as the local Armenian newspapers and the one-time Armenian cultural representation in Baku. 

An article on the history of the Armenian population of Baku is also posted on the website.

Introducing the website contents at a Wednesday news conference, Hayk Demoyan, the director of the museum, referred to a special document shedding light on renowned Armenians who once lived in the town. He particularly spoke of the Armenians' notable role in the town's oil industry.

"The initiative to create the website is a special tribute to the Armenians killed in mass pogroms," he said. 

"Our objective is to provide the Azerbaijani youth with alternative information about the history of their capital. After getting familiarized with this website, many Azeris will change their attitude to the town; they will feel the Armenians' presence when passing by every single building."

Demoyan characterized the website