Speech of Ambassador Yeganian commemorating the 98th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

24 April, 2013

Speech of H.E. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Canada at the 98th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide event in Toronto, 21.04.2013

Reverend Fathers, Honourable guests, dear compatriots,

We are gathered here to remember one of the saddest pages of the human history. 98 years ago on April 24 more than 300 Armenian intellectuals – writers, clergymen, political activists, were arrested in Constantinople, tortured, murdered or set to be deported by the Young Turk government of the fading Ottoman Empire. Nowadays, as we all very well know, April 24 is the day we commemorate the 1.5 million victims of Medz Yeghern – the Armenian Genocide.

The Armenian Genocide is considered to be the first modern genocide. It was a governmentally devised plan to annihilate an entire nation – seen as the main obstacle for the creation of a Pan-Turkic Empire. Medz Yeghern is not only a memory in the hearts of Armenians worldwide, it is not only an open wound for us, it was the beginning of the practice of racial extermination that got amplified during the Holocaust, genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and other tragedies throughout the world.

After the World War II a Polish lawyer with Jewish heritage, named Raphael Lemkin, introduced the term “genocide” to the international community. In 1921 still a student of philology Raphael Lemkin asked his professor why the masterminds of the Armenian slaughters were not arrested, and the answer, that there was no law under which they could be arrested, was the reason he devoted his life to the studies of crimes against humanity. And it was the Armenian Genocide he was researching when he coined out the term – without even knowing that most of his family would perish in the midst of the Holocaust. His input was tremendous in the drafting of the Genocide Convention, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 in order to prevent the repetition of the “crime of the crimes”, as Lemkin himself referred to genocide.

The international recognition of the Armenian Genocide is essential for the practice of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in terms of preventing the future atrocities against humanity. Research and inclusion of the issue in educational systems worldwide is crucial.

Sadly, though, the Armenian Genocide is not widely known, and those, outside Armenia and the Armenian communities, who do know, have vaguely heard or once read somewhere about 1915. Although the plan to exterminate Armenians was created and implemented by the Young Turks, I, as a historian, do not consider it the inception of the Genocide. Armenian nation had already seen brutal slaughters by the Ottoman government in past decades. Only the massacres of mid 1890s in Western Armenia took lives of more than 300.000 Armenians. And still, this was not the beginning. If we research the slaughters of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in details, if we combine the numbers of innocent victims of the massacres of the 1800s and the planned Genocide itself, the amount of killed would rise up to 3 millions.

And still, those who have vaguely heard about the Armenian Genocide, most probably never even stumbled upon the other crimes the Young Turk government perpetrated against humanity. It is the genocide of Greeks, with roughly 900.000 Pontic Greeks seeing the same fate as Armenians, the genocide of Assyrians, where some 750.000 Assyrians were slaughtered after Armenians and Greeks.

In terms of recognition - nowadays 21 countries and 43 states of the United States of America have recognized the Armenian Genocide. The independent legal analysis by the International Center for Transitional Justice in 2003 has also concluded that the said “events… include all of the elements of the crime of genocide as defined in the (Genocide) Convention”. Moreover, the most renowned International Association of Genocide Scholars not only recognized and condemned Armenian Genocide, but also wrote an open letter to the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan calling upon Turkish government to “acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the Genocide of the Armenian people”.

Despite growing recognition of the Calamity, the modern Turkish government presses on its policy of denial – spending millions of dollars on propaganda against calling the slaughters Genocide. Should I tell you, that the denial of genocides paves the way for the repetition of new crimes against humanity? Despite geopolitical or national interests, the members of the international community and the community as a whole should stand in the condemnation of genocides and work towards its prevention.

The campaign of the Turks against non-Turkic minorities at the beginning of the 20th century was “successful”. They were able to create a predominantly Turkic country, were able to “solve” the Armenian Question in their favor, Armenians, Pontic Greeks, Assyrians were dispossessed of their ancestral homelands and the Turks proclaimed them their own.

With this in mind, recognition is the least that they owe us!

Dear friends,

Only in two years we will be commemorating the Centennial Anniversary of the Genocide against Armenians, a hundred years of wounds, still open. The policy of denial practiced by the modern Republic of Turkey is abhorrent and the recent campaign by the newly appointed Ambassador of Turkey to Canada Tuncay Babali, that blackmails Canadian government by denominating the recognition of Armenian Genocide as hindrance to “a potentially lucrative trading relationship” is totally unacceptable. I want to express my gratitude to the administration of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, whose response to the Turkish Ambassador was immediate and just. In this article the head of the stakeholder relations of the CMHR Mr. Clint Curle said - "Ongoing denial of this historic atrocity, waged in the name of ethnic homogeneity, makes it a contemporary human rights concern". We couldn’t agree more. I want to seize this opportunity and thank Canadian Government for the creation of this incredible museum and thank the museum itself for the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide as one of its permanent exhibits.

I want to use this opportunity and also thank Canada once again for its recognition of the Armenian Genocide on legislative and executive levels, I want to thank you for not being blackmailed by Turkey and for being objective. I want to thank you for the excellent relations our two countries have established during the two decades of Armenia’s Independence. During this short period we have seen a considerable growth of relations in political, economic and cultural spheres. We have dynamic cooperation in International arena – supporting each other on various issues. For years Canadian mining companies have been present in Armenia and their venture made Canada the top investor in our country last year. Our economic cooperation is largely mining-oriented, but it is not exclusively mining. We have growing cooperation in High Technologies. Armenian software developers even participated in the creation of the latest Blackberries’ operating system. Canada was one of the main supporters of our bid in Francophonie, and with this support Armenia steadily rose from an observer to an associate member and last year to a full-fledged member of le Francophonie. Previously in 2011 Armenia hosted Francophonie cities’ mayors’ global meeting in Yerevan and we were delighted to receive the mayor of Montreal at this event. Our cultural ties were also manifested last year in September, when with the cooperation of Canada’s capital city authorities we held the first ever Armenian Festival in Ottawa. We were also very happy to have the State Philharmonic Trio in Canada, who had great concerts in the three cities of Canada, dedicated to the 21st Anniversary of the Republic of Armenia.

I want to emphasize the incredible working relations the Embassy has with the Department of Foreign Affairs, with Parliament and other state institutions: another thank you to our friends from Canada’s establishment who are present here today.

A latest evidence of our advancing relations was the recent visit of the Canadian delegation, that participated first time ever in the Inauguration of the President of Armenia. Our honourable guest, Mr. Chungsen Leung was part of this delegation.

Friends,

I once again want to express my deep respect to Canadian people for their support and recognition of the Armenian Genocide, this fundamental human rights issue, the one, which impacts us all throughout the globe. Justice was done in Canada and many other countries, now it is Turkey’s turn.

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