Cultural Genocide In Jugha

Azeri soldiers destroying armenian medieval cemetery in 2005.

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

1915
Complete The Ottoman Empire History,
RECOGNIZE The ARMENIAN GENOCIDE of 1915

G E N O C I D E
OF ARMENIANS 
AND  ARMENIAN CULTURE

About Cultural Genocide. What is it?

Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons.

Relevance to International Law

As early as 1933, Raphael Lemkin proposed a cultural component to genocide, which he called "vandalism".[1] However, the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention dropped that concept from their consideration.[2] The legal definition of genocide was confined to acts of physical or biological destruction with intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.[3]

Article 7 of the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (26 August 1994)[4] uses the phrase "cultural genocide" but does not define what it means. The complete article reads as follows:

Indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress for:

(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.

It should be noted that this declaration is only a draft. Were it to pass, it would be a "soft law" instrument and would not present binding legal obligations on UN parties.

Despite its lack of legal currency, the term has acquired rhetorical value as a phrase that is used to protest against the destruction of cultural heritage. It is also often misused as a catchphrase to condemn any destruction the user of the phrase disapproves of, without regard for the criterion of intent to destroy an affected group as such.

Examples of the Term's Usage

Cultural advocates have leveled charges of "cultural genocide" in connection with various events:

* As part of a wider effort to destroy the Polish culture, the Germans during the Second World War closed or destroyed universities, high schools, museums, libraries, and scientific laboratories, and demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes as a form of cultural genocide. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish children should end with elementary education. In a May 1940 memorandum, Heinrich Himmler wrote: "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable." These efforts well along with general massacres of Polish intelligentsia, such as at Piaśnica Wielka where 12,000 intelligentsia were killed.

* In 2007, a Canadian Member of Parliament criticized the Ministry of Indian Affairs' destruction of documents regarding the treatment of First Nations members as "cultural genocide."[5]

* The destruction by Azerbaijan of thousands of medieval Armenian gravestones at a cemetery-site in Julfa, and Azerbaijan's subsequent denial that the site had ever existed, has been widely written about as being an example of cultural genocide.[6][7]

* When Turkey's Minister of Cultural Affairs opened the Aghtamar church in eastern Anatolia as a museum, critics objected to the use of its Turkified name, seeing in it a denial of the region's Armenian heritage and as a sort of "cultural genocide".[8]

"Azerbaijan: Vandalism as usual" "Азербайджан: вандализм как всегда"

The Armenian Genocide Museum Institute has published the illustrated book “Azerbaijan: Vandalism as usual” by Hayk Demoyan, which describes the barbaric demolition of the Armenian cemetery in Old Jugha in December 2005 implemented by the Azerbaijan army, Genocide Institute-Museum web site reports.

Hayk Demoyan
Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan

In December 2005 the soldiers and officers of the Azerbaijan army entirely demolished thousands of unique cross-tones and tombstones in the Armenian cemetary of Old Jugha completing the state policy of destroying the Armenian Christian heritage in Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan territories within the last two decades.

During these vandalistic activities the Armenian medieval cross-tones and tombstones of Old Jugha were turned into mass and thrown into Arax River. At present the shooting-range has been constructed on the territory of the cemetary.

Regardless of the existing numerous photographic and video undeniable evidence and proof, up to date some international organizations, including UNESCO, have not appropriately evaluated the vandalistic activities which were planned and realized on behalf of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Source:

Азербайджан стал проблемой для всего мира

Если такое государство как Азербайджан отрицает то, что доказано многочисленными свидетельствами, фотографиями и видеозaписями, то это не только проблема Армении и Азербайджана, а также проблема всего мира.

Газета пишет, что такое мнение выразил директор Музея-института Геноцида армян Айк Демоян, одновременно сообщив, что именно это послужило основанием для публикации его иллюстрированной книги «Азербайджан: вандализм как всегда» на английском языке. В книге описывается варварское уничтожение армянского кладбища Старой Джуги руками азербайджанской армии в декабре 2005 года.

«От Азербайджана можно ожидать все: такая страна может даже спровоцировать мировую войну. В первый раз я коснулся этой проблемы в 2005 году, через 20 дней после этого случая, однако сегодня прошло 5 лет, и Азербайджан еще не получил соответствующего ответа», - сказал Демоян, подчеркнув, что данный шаг стал большим ударом для пропаганды Азербайджана.  

Несмотря на наличие фотографий, многочисленные записи неоспоримых свидетельств и доказательств, по сей день ни одна международная организация, в том числе и ЮНЕСКО, не дали соответствующих оценок действиям Азербайджана, организованных и осуществленных на государственном уровне.

Source: