The Assyrian Democratic Organization
In connection to the voting in the Swedish Parliament on June 11, 2008, regarding the four motions calling upon Sweden to recognize the 1915 Genocide in Ottoman Turkey. The Foreign Committee has advised rejecting the motions on the basis of “disagreement among researchers” and “the need of further research”.
The Armenian Genocide, which also engulfed the Assyrians, Pontic Greeks and other minorities in the Ottoman Empire, began more than nine decades ago in 1915, but this issue gains added urgency the longer that denial of the crime continues. The genocide, or “extermination” as it was labeled by the international media and diplomatic corps, was an established fact for the world community. During the brief postwar period following the defeat of Turkey in 1918 until the rise of the Turkish Nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal, the annihilation of the Armenians was discussed openly. Turkish court martial tribunals tried political and military leaders implicated in “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” Several of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death or given prison terms. Post-war Turkey passed through a phrase similar to that of Germany after World War II. During these proceedings, the truth about the persecution of the minorities in the Ottoman Empire was brought to light with horrifying details.
The process did not last long, however. The rise of the Turkish Nationalist movement and rejection of the sultan’s government ultimately led to the disbanding of the tribunals and the release of most of the accused. Almost all of the remaining Christian population—Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek—was then cleansed from their homelands of several millennia. Much of the court data and protocols disappeared, and Turkey entered a period of trying to erase all traces of Armenian existence in Anatolia and the historic Armenian plateau to the east.
Nine decades later, the once so-called “forgotten genocide” is no longer forgotten and warrants growing attention among academic and political circles. It is seen as a prototype of mass killing in the twentieth century and can be viewed as one of the most successful campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing in all history. The victimization of the Armenians extended to the Assyrian, Greek, Yezidi, and even Kurdish population, which was subjected to extensive “social engineering” through forced relocation and resettlement. As it happened the Turkish authorities became the beneficiaries of an “Armenia without Armenians” and, despite worldwide pledges and promises to punish the perpetrators, escaped any responsibility for the crime. Today, Turkey implements an active campaign of denial. Silence and passivity on the part of the world community, including Sweden, can only aid and abet this campaign. All the arguments relating to the need for further research or lack of consensus among scholars are spurious. The archives of every major country in Europe leave no doubt about the campaign of annihilation which occurred under the cover of a world conflict. The denialist arguments are all politically motivated and have nothing to do with the historical record. They are no more credible than those of Holocaust deniers such as Robert Faurisson, David Irving, Willis Carto, and Ernst Zündel.
Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in the 1940s and was the principal author of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, was deeply aware of the Armenian calamity and the failure of the international community to intercede or at least to punish the authors of the genocide. Recent research has demonstrated how deeply he was affected by the absence of effective international machinery to intervene at the time. He was also troubled by the persecution and massacres of the Assyrians in Iraq during the 1930s. What is more, newly conducted research at Uppsala University confirms that the Swedish Foreign Department and Government, through the reports of Ambassador Per Gustaf August Cosswa Anckarsvärd’s and Military Attaché Einar af Wirsén, were well aware of the annihilation that was occurring in the Ottoman Empire.
Today, Sweden is internationally regarded as a champion of human rights. It is incumbent on the Swedish authorities to live up to this reputation and to reject any compromise with negationism and denial. The Swedish Government should attempt to assist Turkey to become a better democracy by facing its history and acknowledging the truth, not by continuing to stagger in the darkness of self-deception and pretense.
Today, the data and information about the Genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks are so extensive that no serious politician can honestly cite insufficient or inconclusive research as an excuse to avoid recognition. Refusal to recognize established fact based on qualitative and quantitative research may be regarded as being tantamount to denial. The researchers have done their job in establishing the reality of the Armenian Genocide. Now, the turn has come for the political leaders to fulfill their responsibility by recognizing this calamity for what it was.
The signatories of this letter do not consider there is any doubt that the massacres of Christians and other minorities in the Ottoman Empire during the World War I constituted genocide. Even though research must and will continue, the existing information is compelling and must be acknowledged as such.
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Adam Jones: Associate Professor, Political Science, University of British Columbia Okanagan
Åke Daun: Professor Emeritus of Ethnology, particularly European, Stockholm University
Alex Grobman: President of the Institute for Contemporary Jewish Life and the Brenn Institute
Alexandre Kimenyi: Professor of Linguistics, Ethnic Studies and African Languages at California State University, Sacramento
Alexis Herr: Doctoral Student, Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University
Alfred Grosser: Professor Emeritus, the Paris Institute of Political Science, author of the preface to Vahakn Dadrian, Histoire du génocide arménien, Paris, 1996
Alfred de Zayas: Professor of international Law, Geneva School of Diplomacy, Retired Senior Lawyer with the United Nations
Former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, Former Chief of the Petitions Division at the Office of the UN High , Commissioner for Human Rights, President, P.E.N. International, Centre Suisse Romand
Anatoly M. Khazanov: Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Anders Hultgård:Professor Emeritus of Religious History, Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bruno Chaouat:Associate Professor of French, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Minnesota
Charles Eric Reeves:Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts
Christian P. Scherrer: Professor of Peace Studies, Hiroshima University and Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima, Japan
Claude Mutafian:Associate Professor of Mathematics and Senior Lecturer, the Paris 13 University in Villetaneuse
Ph.D. in History, Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University.
David Gaunt: Professor of History, Södertörn University College, Sweden.
Debórah Dwork: Rose Professor of Holocaust History
Director, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University.
Dickran Kouymjian: Professor of History, Director of Armenian Studies Program, California State University, Fresno.
Donald E. Miller: Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California
Douglas Greenberg: Professor of History, Executive Director, USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, Leavey Library, University of Southern California
Elizabeth R. Baer: Professor of English and Genocide Studies, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota
Ellen J. Kennedy: Interim Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Coordinator, Genocide Intervention Network, Minnesota
Eric D. Weitz: Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Chair, History Department, University of Minnesota
Ervin Staub: Professor of Psychology and Founding Director of the Ph.D. Program in the Psychology of Peace and the Prevention of Violence, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Franklin Hugh Adler: G. Theodore Mitau Chair DeWitt Wallace Professor, Department of Political Science, Macalester College
George Andreopoulos: Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for Human Rights at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York
Heidi Armbruster:Lecturer, School of Humanities, University of Southampton, UK
Helen Fein: Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, Associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Herb Hirsch: Professor of Political Science and co-editor, Genocide Studies and Prevention
L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
Irving Louis Horowitz: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Hannah Arendt Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science
James E. Young: Professor of English and Judaic Studies, University of Massachusetts
John K. Roth: Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Founding Director, The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, Claremont McKenna College, California
Kirk C. Allison: Program Director, Program in Human Rights and Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota
Klas-Göran Karlsson: Professor of History, Lund University, Sweden
Kostas Fraggidis: Secretary, Evxinos Pontos Stockholm
Kristian Gerner: Professor of History, Lund University, Sweden
Lars M. Andersson: Senior Lecturer, Department of History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Linda M. Woolf: Professor of Psychology, Webster University, Missouri
Manus I. Midlarsky: Moses and Annuta Back Professor of International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Martha Minow: Member of the Faculty of Education, Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor, Harvard Law School
Michael Dobkowski: Professor of Religious Studies, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Michael Mann: Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
Norman Naimark: Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in East European Studies, Stanford University
Omer Bartov: John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Department of History, Brown University
Ove Bring: Professor of International Law, Swedish National Defence College, Stockholm, Sweden
Paul A. Levine: Senior Lecturer in Holocaust History, Education Director, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden
Rachel Hadodo: Chairwoman of the Board, Union of Assyrian Associations in Sweden
Raffi Momjian: Chairman and Executive Director, The Genocide Education Project, San Francisco
Raymond Kévorkian: Professor, Institut Français de Géopolitique, Université Paris 8 Saint-Denis
Richard G. Hovannisian: Professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History, University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Melson: Cohen-Lasry Distinguished Professor, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University
Roger W. Smith: Professor Emeritus, Department of Government, College of William and Mary, Virginia , Past President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Ronald Grigor Suny: Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History, The University of Michigan
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History, The University of Chicago
Rudolph Joseph Rummel: Professor Emeritus of Political Science, the University of Hawaii
Sandra Tatz: Director of the Australian Association of Holocaust & Genocide Studies
Saul P. Friedlander: Professor, Department of History, UCLA
Shelly Tenenbaum: Professor of Sociology, Undergraduate Activities Coordinator, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University
Stanley Payne: Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Wisconsin
Steven Leonard Jacobs: Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, The University of Alabama, Editor, the Papers of Raphael Lemkin, 1st Vice-President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Susan Ashbrook Harvey: Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University
Tessa Hofmann: Ph.D. in Sociology, Department of Sociology, Institute for East European Studies, Free University Berlin
Tigran Sarukhanyan: Member of International Association of Genocide Scholars, Visiting Research Fellow (PRO), Official Archives of Great Britain, Humboldrt Fellow, University of Goettingen, Germany
Tuomas Martikainen: Ph.D., Postdoctoral Researcher, Academy of Finland, Åbo Akademi University, Deptartment of Comparative Religion
Vahagn Avedian: Chairman of the Board, Union of Armenian Associations in Sweden, Chief Editor, Armenica.org
William Hewitt: Professor, Holocaust Genocide Program, West Chest University of Pennsylvania
Winton Higgins: Director of the Australian Association of Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Visiting Research Fellow, Institute for International Studies, University of Technology, Sydney
Wolfgang Gust: Editor of the Official Documents of the German Foreign Office on the Armenian Genocide
Yair Auron: Professor in Sociology, Head of the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel, Jerusalem
Yehuda Bauer: Professor Emeritus, Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Faculty of Humanities, Hebrew, University of Jerusalem
Yves Ternon: Ph.D. in History, Paris 4-Sorbonne University. HDR, Universit Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3
