Swedish parliament refuses to recognize Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - On June 12, 2008, the Swedish parliament, with a vote 245 to 37 (1 abstain, 66 absent), rejected a call for recognition of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire. On June 11, a long debate took place in the Swedish Parliament in regard to the Foreign Committee report on Human Rights, including five motions calling upon the Swedish Government and Parliament to officially recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide, head of the Armenian Associations of Sweden Vahagn Avedian told PanARMENIAN.Net



In its answer (2007/2008:UU9), a majority consisting of the ruling alliance parties together with the Social Democrats (opposition party) proposed rejecting the motions, whereby the Green (Miljöpartiet) and the Left (Vänsterpartiet) parties announced their reservations, forcing the Parliament to have a debate in the main chamber before the proposal was voted on.



The argumentation for why recognition should be rejected was based on four main assumptions: "no particular consideration regarding the Armenian situation has ever been in form of an UN Resolution, either in 1985 or any other occasion; the Committee understands that what engulfed the Armenians, Assyrian/Syrians and Chaldeans during the reign of the Ottoman Empire would, according to the 1948 Convention, probably be regarded as genocide, if it had been in power at the time; there is still a disagreement among the experts regarding the different course of events of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The same applies to the underlying causes and how the assaults shall be classified; [in regard to the development in Turkey] in the time being, it would be venturesome to disturb an initiate and delicate national process."