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We Will Live To Regret Our Indifference To Genocide

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  • We Will Live To Regret Our Indifference To Genocide

    WE WILL LIVE TO REGRET OUR INDIFFERENCE TO GENOCIDE

    Derby Telegraph, UK
    April 25, 2014 Friday

    Soapbox Russell Pollard

    NINETY-NINE years ago, on April 24, 1915, the Turks of the dying
    Ottoman Empire started arresting Armenians in Constantinople. This
    led very quickly to a programme of mass deportation and massacre which
    resulted in the first genocide of the 20th century. Around 1.5 million
    Armenians were killed, and those who survived fled to many countries
    throughout the world, creating one of the largest forced diasporas.

    In his decision to embark on his expansionist policy throughout Europe,
    Adolf Hitler is quoted as saying: "Who, after all, speaks today of
    the annihilation of the Armenians?" A chilling reminder from the
    past of the horrific consequences of not accepting, and recognising,
    such terrible events. The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin
    in 1944 - largely based on the massacre of the Armenians.

    It was 50 years before any country (Uruguay) in the United Nations
    formally recognised that the Armenian genocide actually took place,
    and since then only a further 20 countries have followed suit. Notable
    exceptions are the UK and the US. The remaining countries only
    stepped forward after the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the
    early 1990s, where the Azerbaijanis tried to ethnically cleanse the
    Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

    Genocide recognition for the Armenians is not about correcting
    a historical point in a textbook or scoring political points, it
    is fundamentally more profound than that. On an individual level,
    it is about unresolved personal grieving that persists through the
    generations. It is also about getting justice and closure, through
    acceptance, and giving them the opportunity, finally, to lay people
    to rest.

    To this day, Turkey does not countenance any discussion of the Armenian
    genocide. Azerbaijan has a declared anti-Armenian policy with a
    published strategy to prove that the Armenian genocide was a myth.

    Locked between these two adversarial countries, in the South Caucasus,
    is Armenia and the unrecognised Nagorno-Karabakh. They exist in a
    world where 170 countries don't accept that their genocide took place
    in 1915, or that the underlying conditions were evident in the 1990s
    or that the implications of it are ever present today. When I see
    what is happening in the region, I fear so much that one day we will
    live to regret our indifference - such is the lifeblood of genocide!

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