Sounds like another piece of inconspicuous legislation doesn't it? Yet slotted in between several pieces of economic legislation is a resolution that challenges current American foreign policy to the core and helps to define the views of the American people on the rights of man. Deep? Yes - this is genocide after all.
US legislators have passed a resolution declaring the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks over the period 1915-17 to be genocide. Turkey admits that many Armenians died in World War 1, but denies that there was a campaign to actively murder any members of the population. The US Congress disagrees. As does the French parliament. And Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Russia and Uruguay.
Yet this has not always been the case. It's surprising how political motives often seek to subvert the true and proper labelling of certain acts. Remember that we of course "don't do body counts" in the West. Where the UK, Israel and the US like to put conditions to the word genocide, the UN definition makes no such reservations, clearly outlining the act as:
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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.
– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II
This definition was ratified by the UN General Assembly on 9th December 1948. So why is there any debate, and why does the row continue? Armenians are one of the world's most dispersed peoples. While in Armenia, Genocide Memorial Day is commemorated across the country, it is the diaspora that has lobbied for recognition from the outside world. The killings are regarded as the seminal event of modern Armenian history, and one that binds the diaspora together. In Turkey, the penal code makes calling "for the recognition of the Armenian genocide" illegal. Writers and translators have been prosecuted for attempting to stimulate debate on the subject. Turkey has condemned countries that recognise the Armenian genocide, and was furious when the French parliament passed a bill in 2006 outlawing denial of it. Turkey suspended military ties with France in retaliation.
I'd like to suggest that genocide is a label not easily placed upon nations (or come to think of it, allies) in the current uncertain geopolitical context. President Bush made the unusual step of attempting to make a last minute intervention in congressional affairs arguing that resolutions are not the way of dealing with 'historic mass killings'. Perhaps that's because resolutions make people angry. Unlike the French, the US has very close military ties with Turkey; acting as a regional command hub for US forces and as a staging post for aircraft missions into Iraq (70% of planes and 30% of fuel are transported through Turkish airspace). The US therefore has more to lose by angering a key ally.
Tom Lantos, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, described a very sobering choice. "We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying," he said. The fact that US Representatives were willing to express their displeasure suggests that the self-interested refusal to examine similar genocides in Rwanda or Darfur may be coming to an end. A move that I, and many others around the world, truly welcome.
Blygt.
