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19 November 2010

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Genocide Defined

 

There have been many attempts

to destroy entire groups of people

 

 

Genocide is a very nasty business. In 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as an action intended “to destroy in whole, or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

 

The most clear-cut example of genocide was the Holocaust of the 1930s and ‘40s, in which Nazi Germany tried to kill all the Jews of Europe. They managed to exterminate six million, but their campaign was halted by their defeat in World War II.

 

A generation earlier 1.5 million Armenians died. But, was it genocide? In 1915, Armenia was part of the crumbling Ottoman Empire of Turkey. It was then, and still is today, a small nation to the east of Turkey, with many ethnic Armenians spilling over the border into eastern Turkey.

 

The First World War was raging and Russian forces were advancing on Turkey. The Armenians threw in their lot with Russia. Turkey responded by rounding up hundreds of thousands of Armenians. They were marched into Syria and Iraq and left there in a desert without resources. Along the way, thousands were robbed, raped, and killed.

 

Turkey admits to the tragic events taking place but says it was not genocide. The official Turkish version is that terrible things often happen in wars and the deaths of the Armenians is one such sad episode among many.

 

Armenians around the world have campaigned to have the affair officially recognized as genocide. Turkey, with equal vigor, exerts pressure to stop the genocide definition from being made. So far, most historians and many national governments have sided with the Armenians.

 

In April 2004, Canada’s Parliament passed Bill M-380, which declared the Turkish action to be genocide.

 

In May 2008, the Toronto District Board of Education was not so forthright. After complaints from Turkish groups, the board removed a book about genocide from its recognized reading list. Extraordinary Evil by Barbara Coloroso describes and makes reference to the “Armenian Genocide.”

 

© Canada and the World, September 2008

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Armenian View

 

Turkish View

“Despite tremendous effort and what appear to be our best efforts stretching

over hundreds of years, discrimination,

oppression, brutality, and tyranny, remain all too common features of the human condition.”

Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of

Social Hierarchy and Oppression