Every week I’m appalled by the topics deemed relevant by the student body. I was promptly informed nobody would be interested, when I first suggested my column discuss the Armeniam Genocide. But they should be.
The U.N. defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The U.S. and the U.N. carefully avoided the term “genocide,” in 1994 while genocide was claiming hundreds of thousands of lives in Rwanda.Why?
Because Article 1 of the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide bestows on the contracting parties an obligation “to prevent and to punish” genocide, “a crime under international law.”
What did Rwanda really have to offer economically? Not much — and so the world turned a blind eye.
Approximately 800,000 Rwandans were massacred.
Recent resurgence of the debate over the 1915 murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire has angered the Turkish government.
Turkey recalled ambassadors from Sweden and the U.S. earlier this month when a nonbinding resolution in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee recognized the slaughter as genocide. This was followed by a similar vote in the Swedish parliament.
In January 2008, during his Presidential campaign, Sen. Obama promised, “as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
But as the resolution awaits Senate approval, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are working to discourage the vote.The problem is this resolution threatens U.S.–Turkish ties, and it jeopardizes efforts to mend relations between Turkey and Armenia.
Turkey’s bid for full EU membership has been frustrated for years. Turkey is now turning from the West, as the government begins to remember Ottoman power lay not in following the West, but in leading the Middle-Eastern states.
Its importance to the U.S. has increased exponentially. No longer is it begging for admittance into a Western club. Turkey wields considerable power over political processes in a volatile region critical to U.S. national security.
It is important the Senate vote to classify the Armenian slaughter as genocide despite this.
It may have occurred nearly a century ago, but recognition of historical crimes is important to our ability to recognize and act when similar crimes against the human race are perpetrated in the present.
“As crimes of genocide continue to plague the world, Turkey’s policy of denying the Armenian Genocide gives license to those who perpetrate genocide everywhere,” the International Association of Genocide Scholars stated in a letter to congress, according to Howard L. Berman, D-CA, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman.
Opponents argue though many Armenians were killed by Ottoman troops, there was no “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” the Armenian people. Therefore, genocide is an improper classification.
Critics claim these atrocities occurred under the conditions of rebellion and civil war.
There may be evidence to support these claims — and I am not an expert on the evidence provided to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
But the House labled the death of the 1.5 million Armenians as genocide in 1975 and 1984. The House Foreign Affars Committee voted to recognize the genocide in 2007 and now in 2010. In all instances, politics prevented a vote on the resolution by Congress in full.
It’s time the truth be told. It’s time to judge genocide according to evidence and not according to political concerns or fear of a legal obligation to provide assistance as thousands die.
In the future, will we once again turn our back as children, mothers and fathers are slashed apart with machetes?
Why should a college student care about the classification of the murder of 1.5 million Armenians nearly 100 years ago by a regime no longer in power?
Because it sets precedence for what our society is willing to accept or condemn.
How many more times will we ignore the cries of children, mothers and fathers as they are marched to their death in concentration camps or loaded onto barges and sunk at sea?
Nathan Shull is a 35-year-old finance junior from Seattle. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_nshull
Contact Nathan Shull at [email protected]