| |
|
 |
|
|
Bay Area
Armenian National Committee |
|
The
Bay Area
Armenian National
Committee (ANC-SF) is a grassroots public affairs organization serving to
inform, educate, and act on a wide range of issues concerning Armenian Americans
throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
More |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
United
Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of
Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
July 2, 1985
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 and its footnotes:
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.
11. Arnold
Toynee, 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). |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|