UK House of Commons holds debate on Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - The UK House of Commons held earlier this week an adjournment debate on the Armenian Genocide centennial. The discussion was led by Labor Member of Parliament Stephen Pound.

“The subject of this Adjournment debate is the commemoration of one of the most appalling, heinous acts that has ever been committed on this earth: the Armenian genocide of 23 and 24 April 1915,” Stephen Pound said during the debate, according to Asbarez.

“What I have to say tonight is not an attack on the Government of Turkey. I am not criticizing the Government of Turkey. I realize that these debates frequently engender much heat and very little light in Ankara, but I am talking specifically of the actions of the Ottoman Empire and particularly the Young Turks, whom I will mention later, in 1915. I make no apologies for raising this matter. Not only are we approaching the 100th anniversary of this appalling crime against humanity, in which 1.5 million people were killed in the most horrendous circumstances and an attempt was made to destroy an entire people—their culture, nationhood and very being and existence. This is also a time when two books have just been published. The first, “An Inconvenient Genocide” by Geoffrey Robertson, once and for all proves to those gainsayers who are still out there that the genocide was real and that it did happen: the dates, names and times are provided. The other excellent book is “The Fall of the Ottomans” by Eugene Rogan, which contains a chapter on the annihilation of the Armenians,” Pound said.

According to the MP, it is otiose even to ask the question, ‘Was there genocide?’ Yet the question has been asked many times.

“People have said there was no genocide in 1915, but to a certain extent that was not the only genocide. The Armenians—a people of incredible, intense culture and great sophistication—were assaulted between 1894 and 1896, when 200,000 people were killed. There was the Adana massacre of 1909, in which 20,000 to 30,000 people were killed. In particular, leading up to 1915, after the 1912 Balkan wars, refugees from the Caucasus and Rumelia—they were known as muhacirs—moved from the south Balkans and the Caucasus into Anatolia. That movement into the traditional Armenian land, coupled with the aftermath of the battle of Sarikamish—which took place on 24 December 1914, when the Russians defeated the Ottoman army—led to a completely different situation whereby the peaceful Armenian people suddenly found themselves between different warring factions: on the one hand the Ottoman empire, and on the other people moving into their land, so they were dispossessed. The then War Minister, Enver Pasha, demobilised all Armenians from the army—many of them fought in the Ottoman army—into labour battalions, and the infamous tehcir law, which is known as the deportation law, was passed by Talaat Pasha, the Interior Minister.”

One and a half million people were driven to die in the burning sands of the Syrian desert in a death march to two concentration camps, in which the men were killed first, Pound reminded. The then Interior Minister said, ‘Kill the men, the women and all the children up to the height of my knee.’ If that is not genocide, I really do not know what is. In Trabzon—or Trebizond—14,000 were killed. Many of them were put into boats, which were dragged into the Black sea and sunk. People were injected with typhoid or morphine. Experiments took place on children in a way that presages what happened under the Nazis. Incidentally, what happened in Trebizond was witnessed by the Italian consul general, Gorrini, who started out being sceptical, but ended up as horrified as every other civilized person.

“We are not entirely sure how many, but 20 or 22 national Parliaments have recognized the Armenian genocide, including the devolved Assemblies in Scotland, Wales and—I am delighted to say—Northern Ireland. No one who visits the Genocide museum in Yerevan and sees testimony from all around the world, photographs, cards, letters and books can remain unmoved. No one can deny for a moment that something horrible and terrible beyond human imagination took place in western Armenia at that time,” Pound said.

“Genocide is a crime that is intended to destroy a people. Genocide denial is a crime that is intended to destroy a people’s memory. The Armenian people will not have their memory, their culture, their individuality, their strength or their national pride destroyed. Many people have tried; none have ever succeeded, nor ever will they. Think of the double agony of those people whose families were massacred, whose culture was destroyed, whose homelands have been taken over and who are now having that very act denied. That, for me, is the supreme double cruelty,” he said.