Wednesday, April 24 2024 12:47

ArmInfo. the Zoryan Institute  highlights the importance of genocide awareness. 

"April, Genocide Awareness Month, is a critical time to highlight the  relevance of genocide education and the urgent need to combat  prejudice and violence in today's world," the statement said.

In this context, the Institute touched upon topics discussed today in  the Turkish media.

"Today the following question was raised in the Turkish media:  "........ Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has recently  refrained from using the term "genocide" when speaking about the  events of 1915.  All he said was "a big disaster." This was  interpreted as a reflection of the position of the voters who brought  him to power, as a demand for normalization of the situation in the  region. The same Pashinyan also criticized the inclusion of Mount  Ararat in the state emblem, saying that it is located within the  borders of Turkey. What do you think of this position, which seems to  be for peace?..."

The Zoryan Institute would like to take a moment to answer this  question. On March 7, 2000, a statement was made by 126 Holocaust  researchers, academic department chairs, and directors of Holocaust  studies and research centers, and their petition appeared in The New  York Times on June 9, 2000. In this statement, 126 Holocaust scholars  affirmed the irrefutable fact of the Armenian Genocide and called on  Western democracies to officially recognize it. The petitioners,  which included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who was the  keynote speaker at the conference, also asked Western democracies to  call on the Turkish government and parliament to finally come to  terms with the dark chapter of Ottoman-Turkish history and recognize  the Armenian Genocide - a step that would give invaluable impetus to  the democratization process Turkey", the institute states. 

The Zoryan Institute called on the Armenian government to remember  the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of  Genocide."

"In this Convention, genocide means any of the following acts  committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,  ethnic, racial or religious group as such: killing members of the  group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;  intentionally inflicting living conditions on the group, calculated  for its complete or partial physical destruction; the introduction of  measures aimed at preventing births within the group; forced transfer  of children from the group to another group.

The second point of the convection above emphasizes the intention of  partial destruction. The number of people killed, do not turn a mass  atrocity into genocide," the Institute said in a statement.