Historical Background

 

• Canada, Government, Declaration, April 2006
• Lithuania, Parliament, Resolution, December 2005
• Germany, Bundestag Parliament, Resolution, June 2005
• Polish, Parliament, Resolution, April 2005
• Netherlands, House of Representatives, Resolution, December 2004
• Slovakia, National Assembly, Resolution, November 2004
• Canada, House of Commons, Resolution, April 2004
• European Parliament, Resolution, April 2004
• Argentina, Senate, Declaration, March 2004
• Uruguay, Law, March 2004
• Switzerland National Council, Resolution, December 2003
• Argentina, Senate, Resolution, August 2003
• Canada, Senate, Resolution, June 2002
• Common Declaration of His Holiness John Paul II and His Holiness Karekin II at Holy Etchmiadzin, Republic of Armenia, September 2001
• Prayer of John Paul II, Memorial of Tzitzernagaberd (Armenia) - September 2001
• Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, Declaration, April 24, 2001
• France, Law, January 2001
• Italy, Chamber of Deputies, Resolution, November 2000
• European Parliament, Resolution, November 2000
• Lebanon, Parliament, Resolution, May 2000
• Sweden, Parliament, Report, March 2000
• Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, Declaration, April 24, 1998
• Belgium, Senate, Resolution, March 1998
• Lebanon, Chamber of Deputies, Resolution, April 1997
• U.S., House of Representatives, Resolution 3540, June 1996
• Greece (Hellenic Republic), Parliament, Resolution, April 1996
• Russia, Duma, Resolution, April 1995
• Argentina, Senate, Resolution, May 1993
• European Parliament, Resolution, June 1987
• U.S., House of Representatives, Joint Resolution 247, September 1984
• Cyprus, House of Representatives, Resolution, April 1982
• U.S., House of Representatives, Joint Resolution 148, April 1975
• Uruguay, Senate and House of Representatives, Resolution, April 1965
• U.S., Senate, Resolution 359, May 1920
• U.S., Congress, An Act to Incorporate Near East Relief, August 1919
• U.S., Senate, Concurrent Resolution 12, February 1916
• France, Great Britain, and Russia, Joint Declaration, May 1915

• International Center for Transitional Justice Report Prepared for TARC, February 2003
• European Alliance of YMCAs, July 2002
• Le Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, May 1998
• The Association of Genocide Scholars, June 1997
• Parlamenta Kurdistane Li Derveyi Welat, April 1996
• Union of American Hebrew Congregations, November 1989
• Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, Verdict of the Tribunal, April 1984
• World Council of Churches, August 1983

• Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada, April 24, 2002
• Konstantinos Stefanopoulos, President of Greece, July 1996
• Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada, April 24, 1996
• François Mitterrand, President of France, January 1984
• Al-Husayn Ibn ‘Ali, Sharif of Mecca, 1917
  
   

 

Turkish Historians, Political and

Military Leaders Acknowledge the

Armenian Genocide

 

“The fact that what happened in 1915 was a mass murder was not even a subject of argument from the viewpoint of the actors of the time, with Mustafa Kemal at their head. The main subject of discussion was about how to punish ‘Turks.’ ”

 Dr. Taner Akcam

University of Michigan

1915 Legends and Realities, Radikal, May 25 2003

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In a communication to General Kazim Karabekir, on May 6 1920 about attacking the fledgling Armenian Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of the Turkish Republic) said:

 

• “The Christian world, especially America will turn against us, associating such an attack the possibility of ‘a new Armenian massacre’”

Kazim Karabekir, Istiklal Harbimiz [Our war of Independence], 1969.

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On September 22 1919, from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to Major-General Harbord, the head of the American Military Mission to Armenia:

 

• “Kemal used the 800,000 figure to describe the number of Armenian victims. He, in fact, ‘disapproved of the Armenian massacres.’ (Ermeni kitlini o da takbih ediyordu).”

 

“Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

 

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On April 24 1920, the day after the inauguration of the new parliament of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk stated:

 

• “The World War I massacres against the Armenians (Ermenilere karşi kitliam) [was] a shameful act (fazahat).”

 

“Ataturkün Söylev ve Demerçleri 1918-1938” (The Speeches and Statements of Atatürk) vol.1, 1945.

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview with a French publicist he (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) inveighed against the Ittihadist chiefs, whom he blamed for the crime against the Armenians:

 

• “They, [the Ittihadist] and their accomplices…deserve the gallows. Why are the Allies delaying having all these rascals hung?”

 

(Maurice Prax, “Constantinople: Lectures pour tous,” 1920).

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk:

 

• “The massacre and deportation of Armenians was the work of a small committee who had seized the power.”

 

“Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

 

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview (Los Angeles Examiner, August 1, 1926) with Swiss journalist, Emile Hildebrand, Ataturk said:

 

• “These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been accountable for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the republican rule.”

 

Turkish Court Martial: To judge Talaat and the other criminals who participated in organizing the genocide of 1915, a Turkish Court Martial was formed on March 8, 1919.

The following is an abridged version of the accusation against them:

 

• “…the essential point which emerges from the open inquiry is that the crimes committed during the deportations of the Armenians in different locations and at different times were not isolated and local cases. A central force, organized by and composed of persons mentioned here, premeditated and executed them, through secret orders or verbal instructions.

The court declares unanimously the guilt of the charges mentioned earlier of the accused hereby named, members of the General Council which represent the moral person of the Ittihad. According to the disposition of the law, the Court declares the penalty of death against Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim, and forced labor for 15 years against Djavid, Moustafa Cherif and Moussa Kiazim.”

 

(Dr. Taner Akcam, Dialogue Across an International Divide: Essays Towards a Turkish-Armenian Dialogue, 2001).

 

The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey: The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey voted the following motion:

 

• “The venerable Assembly reached the conclusion that during the last war, brothers Talaat Pasha, Midhat Chukri, Hussein Dhajid, Behaeddine Chekir, forced compatriots to leave their homes, had them assassinated, and stole their goods, and for these reasons they are expelled from the Masonic ranks.”

c2. The Turkish Journal Yeni Stamboul

 

General Vehib Pasha (Bukat): Commander of the Turkish Third Army

 

• “The massacre and destruction of the Armenians and the plunder and pillage of their goods were the result of decisions reached by Ittihad’s Central Committee…The atrocities were carried out under a program that was determined upon and involved a definite case of premeditation.”

Records of the 1919 Turkish Military Tribunal

 

Mustafa Arif (Deymer): Interior Minister 1918-19

 

• “Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the Armenians and they did exterminate them. This decision was taken by the Central Committee of the Young Turks and was implemented by the Government…The atrocities committed against the Armenians reduced our country to a gigantic slaughterhouse.”

(VAKIT, 13 Dec. 1918)

 

Halide Edib: American Educated Feminist Writer

 

• “…Indeed, we tried to destroy the Armenians through methods peculiar to the Middle Ages. We are living today the saddest and darkest times of our national life.”

(VAKIT, 22 Oct. 1918)

 

Dr. Taner Akcam: University of Michigan, The Long Denied Armenian Genocide, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2003.

 

• “Turks and their history books still cannot accept that there was an organized mass murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1917. Perhaps that is because so many of the murderers and looters were also heroes of the founding of the modern Turkish republic.

“The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, spoke on the subject dozens of times; he condemned the massacres, which he called infamous, and demanded that those who were guilty be punished.”

 

Falih Rifik Atay, a close friend and confidant of Ataturk, a former Ittihadist, and Kemalist publicist:

 

• When discussing the persecution of World War I Armenian massacres, he too saw fit to characterize them as “genocide,” using exactly this composite Greco Latin term, at the same time lamenting the fact that there were:

“…alternative remedies [to the Armenian problem]; why incur the risk of dishonoring the name of the nation? Mustafa Kemal too was against the genocide.”

 

Halil Berktay: Professor of History at the University of Sabanci in Istanbul

 

• “I believe that things will change. For decades we have been putting Turkish Opinion to sleep with the same lullabies. Meanwhile there are a ton of documents providing the sad reality…I even cried upon discovering certain clichés. In Turkey, our youth grow up sheltered. Later in life when some go abroad to study, they discover the reality. For me, the discovery at Yale University was very traumatizing. We caused the death of at least 600 000 people in ten months. If we are not racists, we should be feeling the profoundness of such horror.”

 

(L’Express, 09-11-2000, The Armenian Question: Resolving a taboo.)

 

World Leaders and Diplomats Reaffirm the Armenian Genocide
 

American Sources
 

Ronald Reagan: President of the United States of America

 

• “Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it — and like too many other such persecutions of too many other peoples — the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.” April 22, 1981

 

           Gerald Ford: President of the United States of America

 

• “Mr. Speaker, with mixed emotions we mark the 50th anniversary of the Turkish genocide of the Armenian people. In taking notice of the shocking events in 1915, we observe this anniversary with sorrow in recalling the massacres of Armenians and with pride in saluting those brave patriots who survived to fight on the side of freedom during World War I.”

 

 

           Theodore Roosevelt: President of the United States of America.

 

• “. . . the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it . . . the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.” May 11, 1918

 

Henry Morgenthau: Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Turkey from 1913 to 1916

 

• “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.

…Whatever crimes the most perverted instincts of the human mind can devise, and whatever refinements of persecution and injustice the most debased imagination can conceive, became the daily misfortunes of this devoted people. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episodes as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared with the suffering of the Armenian race in 1915.”

 

           Leslie A. Davis: U.S. Consul in Harput from 1914 to 1917

 

• “A remarkable thing about the bodies that we saw was that nearly all of them were naked…There were gaping bayonet wounds on most of the bodies, usually in the abdomen or chest, sometimes in the throat. Few persons had been shot, as bullets were too precious. It was cheaper to kill with bayonets and knives. Another remarkable thing was that nearly all the women lay flat on their back and showed signs of barbarous mutilation by the bayonets of the gendarmes, these wounds having been inflicted in many cases probably after the women were dead…We estimated that in the course of our ride around the lake, and actually within the space of twenty-four hours, we had seen the remains of not less than ten thousand Armenians who had been killed around lake Goeljuk.”

 

British Sources

 

Winston S. Churchill: Prime Minister of Great Britain

 

• “In 1915, the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor.”

 

David Lloyd George: Prime Minister of Great Britain

 

• “In the province of Armenia, Abdul Hamid and the Young Turks had deliberately set themselves to the simplification of the Armenian difficulty by exterminating and deporting the whole race, whom they regarded as infidels and traitors.”

German Sources
 

Adolf Hitler: Chancelor of Germany from 1933 to1945

 

• “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

 

This statement first appeared in Lochner’s What about Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1942) p. 1-4. The Nuremburg Trial later identified the document as Exhibit USA-28:

 

 

Hans Wangenheim: Ambassador of Imperial Germany to Turkey from 1912 to October 1915

 

• “…the manner in which the matter of relocation is being handled demonstrates that the government is in fact pursuing the goal of annihilating the Armenian race in Turkey.”

 

 

Hohenlohe-Langenburg: Ambassador Extraordinary, Oct.-Nov 1915

 

• “The systematic butchery of the uprooted and deported Armenians has assumed such a scope…it was not only tolerated but openly promoted by the government. It meant the extermination of the Armenians. Despite government assurances to the contrary, everything points to the goal of the destruction of the Armenian people.”

 

 

Paul Hindenburg: Field Marshall (From my Life, Leipzig, 1934, p.169)

 

• “Turkey initiated a policy of annihilation against the Armenians.”

 

 

Friedrich Kress Kressenstein: Major-General, Chief of Operations, Turkish General Headquarters

 

• “The Turks have by no means relinquished their intention to exterminate the Armenians. They merely changed their tactics. Wherever possible, the Armenians are being aroused, and provoked in the hope of thereby securing a pretext for new assaults on them.”

 

 

George Mayer: Prof. Dr. Colonel, Deputy Chief in the Department of Health of the Turkish Army

 

• “The decision to expel women, children and old men, was the result of a hatred against the Armenians, and involved a wild objective on the part of the Turkish government to obliterate this race…the massive arrests of the men were carried out not only near the front but throughout the empire…and in the corridors of the Turkish Ministry of War one heard people tell with cynical grins the story of how all these thousands died natural deaths or how they were victims of accidents- as registered in official records…”

 

Colonel Stange: Commander of the 8th Regiment of the Turkish Army

 

• “The Turks did have a plan [to destroy the Armenians] that was conceived long time ago. The deportation and destruction of the Armenians was decided upon by the Young Turk [Committee of Union and Progress] Committee in Constantinople.”

Austrian Sources
 

Johann Markgraf Pallavicini: Austrian Ambassador to Turkey, 1906-1918

 

• “…The Armenian population which is being expelled from its homeland is not only being subjected to the greatest misery but also to a total extermination.” June 27, 1915.

• “The manner in which the Armenians are being deported for resettlement purposes is tantamount to a death verdict for the affected people.” July 1, 1915.

• “The time will come when Turkey will have to account for this policy of extermination.” August 13 1915.

 

Joseph Pomiankowski: Vice-Marshall, Military Plenipotentiary in Wartime Turkey

 

• “In the course of the summer 1915 the Turkish government with inexorable consequence brought its bloody task of the extermination of an entire nation to an end…The gruesome destruction of the Armenian nation in Asia Minor by the Ittihadist government was an act which was barbaric and which to the highest degree outrages all human senses.”

Italian Sources

Senior G. Gorrini: Italian Consul-General at Trabzon

 

• “From the 24^th June, the date of the publication of the infamous decree, until the 23^rd of July, the date of my own departure from Trebizond, I no longer slept or ate; I was given over to nerves and nausea, so terrible was the torment of having to look on at the wholesale execution of these defenseless, innocent creatures [Armenians]. The city in a state of siege, guarded at every point by 15,000 troops in complete war equipment, by thousands of police agents, by bands of volunteers and by the members of the “Committee of Union and Progress;” the lamentations, the tears, the abandonment, the imprecations, the many suicides, the instantaneous deaths from sheer terror, the sudden unhinging of men’s reason, the conflagrations, the shooting of victims in the city, the ruthless searches through the houses and in the countryside; the hundreds of corpses found every day along the exile road; the young women converted by force to Islam or exiled like the rest; the children torn away from their families or from the Christian schools, and handed over by force to Moslem families, or else placed by hundreds on board ship in nothing but their shirts, and then capsized and drowned in the Black Sea and the River Deyirmen Deré – these are my last ineffaceable memories of Trebizond, memories which still, at a month’s distance, torment my soul and almost drive me frantic. 
   

Interview published in the 25 August 1915 issue of Il Messaggero.

 

United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities

United Nations Economic and Social Council
Commission on Human Rights
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
Thirty-eighth session
Item 4 of the provisional agenda

E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6 — 2 July 1985

REVIEW OF FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN FIELDS WITH WHICH THE SUB-COMMISSION HAS BEEN CONCERNED

Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide Prepared by Mr. B. Whitaker

[Paragraph 24]

 

24.Toynbee stated that the distinguishing characteristics of the twentieth century in evolving the development of genocide "are that it is committed in cold blood by the deliberate fiat of holders of despotic political power, and that the perpetrators of genocide employ all the resources of present-day technology and organization to make their planned massacres systematic and complete"¹¹. The Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the twentieth century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are the German massacre of Hereros in 1904,¹² the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916,¹³ the Ukrainian pogrom of Jews in 1919,¹⁴ the Tutsi massacre of Hutu in Burundi in 1965 and 1972,¹⁵ the Paraguayan massacre of Ache Indians prior to 1974,¹⁶ the Khmer Rouge massacre in Kampuchea between 1975 and 1978,¹⁷ and the contemporary Iranian killings of Baha'is.¹⁸ Apartheid is considered separately in paragraphs 43-46 below. A number of other cases may be suggested. It could seem pedantic to argue that some terrible mass-killings are legalistically not genocide, but on the other hand it could be counter-productive to devalue genocide through over-diluting its definition.

 

[Paragraph 73]

73."In place of the law of the jungle of “vae victis” (“woe to the conquered”) Hugo Grotius laid the foundation for international law during the terrible Thirty Years War in the Seventeenth Century with his work De Jure Belli ac Pacis (Concerning the Laws of War and Peace). Following the founding of the Red Cross two centuries later, a series of Geneva and Hague Conventions were ratified seeking to establish international norms of conduct even in warfare. There were however no agreed sanctions or procedure to deal with war criminals. After the First World War, the defeated Germans themselves held some war crime trials in Leipzig in 1922, but these were unsuccessfully organized and 888 people out of the 901 charged in them were acquitted. The Turks also in 1919-20 held trials: not of ‘war criminals’ but of some of the Ottomans guilty of the Armenian genocide. When in the Second World War awareness of the extraordinary scale of the Nazi crimes became widespread, a European advisory Commission on War Crimes was set up to consider, as it was told by the French “an enemy who has sought to annihilate whole nations, who has elevated murder to a political system, so that we no longer have the duty of punishing merely those who commit but also those who plan the crime.”⁵⁶ As early as January 1942 the representatives of nine occupied countries conferred in London and issued the St. James’s Declaration that “international solidarity is necessary to avoid the repression of these acts of violence simply by acts of vengeance on the part of the general public and in order to satisfy the sense of justice of the civilized world.”⁵⁷

 

The Declaration announced that punishment for war crimes, whoever committed them, was now a principal war aim of the governments at the conference. It also made clear the intention to bring to justice not only those who themselves physically perpetrated such crimes, but those leaders who ordered them. The St. James’s Declaration was approved by Britain, the United States and the USSR, and significantly, expressed disgust not only at atrocity but at the idea of more vengeance: it implied a desire for some form of judicial proceeding to determine guilt and satisfy a sense of justice. The St. James’s conference was followed by one practical step: the United Nations War Crimes Commission was set up in London in 1943 to collect and collate information on war crimes and criminals.”⁵⁸

 

At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in November 1943, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union had issued a joint declaration condemning Nazi atrocities in occupied Europe. This stated that “at the time of the granting of any armistice to any government which may be set up in Germany, those German officers and men and members of the Nazi Party who have been responsible for or who have taken part in the above atrocities, massacres and executions, will be sent back to the countries in which their abominable deeds were done in order that they may be judged and punished according to the laws of those liberated countries and of the Free Governments which will be erected therein.”

_______________________________________________

[Footnotes]

¹¹ Arnold Toynbee,Experiences (London, Oxford University Press, 1969).

¹² General von Trogha issued an extermination order; water-holes were poisoned and the African peace emissaries were shot. In all, three quarters of the Herero Africans were killed by the Germans then colonizing present-day Namibia, and the Hereros were reduced from 80,000 to some 15,000 starving refugees. See P. Fraenk,The Namibians (London, Minority Rights Group, 1985).

 

¹³ At least 1 million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany. The German Ambassador, Wangenheim, for example, on 7 July 1915 wrote "the government is indeed pursuing its goal of exterminating the Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire" (Wilhelmstrasse archives). Though the successor Turkish Government helped to institute trials of a few of those responsible for the massacres at which they were found guilty, the present official Turkish contention is that genocide did not take place although there were many casualties and dispersals in the fighting, and that all the evidence to the contrary is forged. See, inter alia, Viscount Bryce and A. Toynbee,The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-16 (London, HMSO, 1916): G. Chaliand and Y. Ternon,Genocide des Armeniens (Brussels, Complexe, 1980); H. Morgenthau,Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (New York, Doubleday, 1918); J. Lepsius,Deutschland und Armenien (Potsdam, 1921: shortly to be published in French by Fayard, Paris); R.G. Hovanissian,Armenia on the Road to Independence (Berkeley, University of California, 1967); Permanent People's Tribunal, A Crime of Silence (London, Zed Press, 1985); K. Gurun,Le Dossier Armenien (Ankara, Turkish Historical society, 1983); B. Simsir and others,Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, Bogazici University Press, 1984); T. Ataov,A Brief Glance at the "Armenian Question" (Ankara, University Press, 1984); V. Goekjian, The Turks before the Court of History (New Jersey, Rosekeer Press, 1984); Commission of the Churches on International Affairs,Armenia, the Continuing Tragedy (Geneva, World Council of Churches, 1984); Foreign Policy Institute,The Armenian Issue (Ankara, F.P.I., 1982).

¹⁴ Between 100,000 - 250,000 Jews were killed in 2,000 pogroms by Whites, Cossacks and Ukrainian nationalists. See Z. Katz ed.,Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York, Free Press, 1975), p.362; A. Sachar,A History of the Jews (New York, Knopf, 1967).

 

¹⁵ The Tutsi minority government first liquidated the Hutu leadership in 1965, and then slaughtered between 100,000 and 300,000 Hutu in 1972. See Rene Lemarchand,Selective Genocide in Burundi (London, Minority Rights Group, 1974) and Leo Kuper,The Pity of it All (London, Duckworth, 1977).

¹⁶ In 1974 the International League for the Rights of Man together with the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, charging the Government of Paraguay with complicity in genocide against the Ache (Guayaki Indians), alleged that the latter had been enslaved, tortured and massacred; that food and medicine had been denied them; and their children removed and sold. See Norman Lewis and others in Richard Arens ed.,Genocide in Paraguay (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1976); and R. Arens "The Ache of Paraguay" in J. Porter,Genocide and Human Rights (op.cit.).

¹⁷ It is estimated that at least 2 million people were killed by Pol Pot's Kher Rouge government of Democratic Kampuchea, out of a total population of 7 million. Even under the most restricted definition, this constituted genocide, since the victims included target groups such as the Chams (an Islamic minority) and the Buddhist monks. See Izvestia, 2 November 1978; F. Ponchaud,Cambodia Year Zero (London, Penguin Books, 1978); W. Shawcross,Sideshow; Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979); V. Can and others,Kampuchea Dossier: The Dark Years (Hanoi,Viet Nam Courier, 1979); D. Hawk,The Cambodia Documentation Commission (New York, Columbia University, 1983); L. Kuper,International Action against Genocide (London, Minority Rights Group, 1984).

¹⁸ See evidence presented to United Nations Human Rights Commission and Sub-Commission, 1981-1984, and R. Cooper,The Baha'is of Iran (London, Minority Rights Group, 1985).

⁵⁶ United Kingdom Lord Chancellor’s Office, LCO 2.2978. See A. and J. Tusa, op.cit.

⁵⁷ Telford Taylor, International Conciliation, No. 450 (April 1949).

⁵⁸ It was made up of representatives of 17 nations – but had no Russian member. Stalin would only join if every Soviet Republic were given separate representation. This was refused.

 

 

 

UNITED NATIONS

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL

Distr.

General

E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6/Corr.1
29 August 1985

Original: ENGLISH

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
Thirty-eighth session
Item 4 of the provisional agenda

REVIEW OF FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN FIELDS WITH WHICH THE SUB-COMMISSION HAS BEEN CONCERNED

Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide
Prepared by Mr. B. Whitaker

Corrigendum

31. Paragraph 73, line 10: Between “acquitted” and “when”, insert the following: “The Turks also in 1919-20 held trials: not of ‘war criminals’ but of some of the Ottomans guilty of the Armenian genocide”.

 

United Nations War Crimes Commission Report

May 28, 1948

"...the warning given to the Turkish Government on this occasion by the Governments of the Triple Entente dealt precisely with one of the types of acts which the modern term 'crimes against humanity' is intended to cover, namely, inhumane acts committed by a government against its own subjects."

 

United Nations Economic and Social Council Commission on Human Rights

Report Prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission

In Accordance with the Request Received from the United Nations

Restricted — E/CN.4/W.20 — 28 May 1948

Information Concerning Human Rights Arising from Trials of War Criminals

II. Developments during the First World War

1. The Massacres of the Armenians in Turkey

In connection with the massacres of the Armenian population, which occurred at the beginning of the First World War in Turkey, the Governments of France, Great Britain and Russia made a declaration, on 28 May 1915, denouncing them as "crimes against humanity and civilization" for which all the members of the Turkish Government would be held responsible, together with its agents implicated in the massacres.The relevant part of this declaration reads as follows:

"En presénce de ces nouveaux crimes de la Turquie contre l'humanité et la civilisation, les Gouvernements alliés font savoir publiquement à la Sublime Porte qu'ils tiendront personnellement responsables des dits crimes tous les membres du Gouvernement ottoman ainsi que ceux de ces agents qui se trouveraient impliqués dans de pareils massacres."

As will be shown later in more detail, the warning given to the Turkish Government on this occasion by the Governments of the Triple Entente dealt precisely with one of the types of acts which the modern term "crimes against humanity" is intended to cover, namely, inhumane acts committed by a government against its own subjects.

...The first peace treaty with Turkey, namely, the Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, contained in addition to the provisions dealing with violations of the laws and customs of war [Articles 226-228 corresponding to Articles 228-230 of the Treaty of Versailles] a further provision, Article 230, by which the Turkish Government undertook to hand over to the Allied Powers the persons responsible for the massacres committed during the war on Turkish territory. The relevant parts of this article read as follows:

"The Turkish Government undertakes to hand over to the Allied Powers the persons whose surrender may be required by the latter as being responsible for the massacres committed during the continuance of the state of war on territory which formed part of the Turkish Empire on the 1st August, 1914."

"The Allied Powers reserve to themselves the right to designate the Tribunal which shall try the persons so accused, and the Turkish Government undertakes to recognize such Tribunal."

"In the event of the League of Nations having created in sufficient time a Tribunal competent to deal with the said massacres, the Allied Powers reserve to themselves the right to bring the accused persons mentioned above before such Tribunal, and the Turkish Government undertakes equally to recognize such Tribunal."

The provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sèvres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 referred to in the preceding section, offences which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Articles 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of "crimes against humanity" as understood by these enactments.

The Treaty of Sèvres was, however, not ratified and did not come into force. It was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, which did not contain provisions respecting the punishment of war crimes, but was accompanied by a "Declaration of Amnesty" for all offences committed between 1 August 1914, and 20 November 1922.