Left: President Didier Burkhalter.
(RDB/Xavier Voirol)
Right: Former five
-
time President Giuseppe Motta.
.
THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR GENOCIDE AND HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES
O
n the occasion of the International Day
of Commemoration of the Holocaust
i
n
January of this year, Pres. Didier Burkhalter
said
:
...there are still some today who deny
the extent of the Holocaust...just as
they deny the extent of the other
crimes committed by the Nazis and of
other genocides. It is our duty to
reject this attitude and to counter it by
reminding people of the facts, of t
he
historical reality...Switzerland and
other
countries do not want to just
p
ay lip service to this, but to take
concrete action.
This echoes the speech of five
-
time Swiss
president Giuseppe Motta in the League of
Nations in September 1922, where he said
t
he following about the Armenians:
When we think that this people had a
population of about two and a half
millions, of which only 300,000 now
remain in Turkey, while half a million
are exiles, supported by charity...we
cannot refuse this poor, suffering
peop
le the tribute, not only of our
sympathy, but also of our
determination to assist it in the fullest
measure of our powers.
Indeed, the Swiss people
have always taken
action on behalf of the Armenians
out of
humanitarian concern
. In the Federal
Archives in
Berne there still exists the
famous pro
-
Armenian petition of 1896
-
1897
with the signatures of nearly half a million
people (13.7% of the population), asking the
federal government to intervene to stop the
killings of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
T
he Swiss were often heroic in their fight
to aid the Armenians. From 1899
-
1922,
Jacob Künzler
and his wife Elizabeth
did
their best to alleviate the suffering of
Armenians in a mission hospital at the
crossroads of
the
death caravans on the way
to the Syrian Desert.
As extreme as their
experience was, some Swiss even put their
lives on the line
.
F
or example
,
one
Swiss
engineer was court
-
martialled because he
bravely gave
bread to the starving Armenian
women and children
of a deportation
convoy.
In 2007, a Turkish citizen was convicted
in the Lausanne Police Court of racial
discrimination for calling the Armenian
Genocide an “international lie.” Swiss courts
rejected two appeals, stating that the
Armenian Genocide, like th
e Jewish
Genocide, is a proven fact and is recognised
by Swiss legislation. However the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) overturned
this conviction on December 17, 2013, citing
the right to free speech. The problem with the
ruling is not the right to
free speech, which
most people would agree with. The problem
is that the ECHR made highly debatable
statements about the Armenian Genocide
that went far beyond the Court’s mandate or
competence.
The Court, while pointing out that it was
not called upon to
rule on either the veracity
of the Armenian massacres, or the
appropriateness of legally characterising
those acts as “genocide”, nevertheless
asserted its doubt that there could be a
general consensus about such events. Thus,
the Court, apparently unaware
of the
overwhelming body of published evidence,
unnecessarily called into question the
historical truth of the Armenian Genocide.
The Court took
the view that the notion
of genocide was a precise, narrowly defined
legal concept, only applicable when found
by an international court to be clearly
established. It thereby overlooked the body
of scholarly legal literature that affirms the
Armenian case
is genocide.
The Court further asserted, “The
rejection of the legal characterisation as
‘genocide’ of the 1915 events was not such
as to incite hatred against the Armenian
people,” and that there was no need in
Switzerland to punish an individual for
rac
ial discrimination by challenging this
legal characterization. Yet the Court stated
that “the negation of the Holocaust is today
the principal motor of anti
-
Semitism.”
In fact, the Human Rights Association in
Turkey has made a strong argument for the
racis
m inherent in the Armenian case. They
wrote, “...we are the most immediate, direct
witnesses of how the denial of the genocide
against Armenians and other Christian
ethnic groups of Asia Minor has right from
the start generated an anti
-
democratic
system, all
owing racist hatred, hate crimes,
and violation of freedom of expression and
human rights in general...This has paved
the way for Armenians in Turkey to be
treated as a ‘fifth column’ throughout the
Republican history, to be discriminated
against, to be dest
ined to lead their lives in
constant fear as their lives were threatened
during various nationalist upheavals and
pogroms that took place during the
Republican period.”
Denial has been called the final stage of
genocide. It dehumanizes the victims and
thei
r descendants as being unworthy of
con
cern and continues their victim
ization
through the psychological trauma of having
to endure the ongoing injustice. As such,
denial of the Armenian Genocide certainly
causes harm to Armenians, worldwide.
If the ECHR ruling
stands, it would
perpetuate
anti
-
Armenianism in Turkey and
elsewhere and
it will definitely
promote
racism.
Under the Swiss penal code, any act
of denying, belittling or justifying genocide
is a violation of the anti
-
racism law.
Pres.
Burkhalter
is right to call for
concrete action.
The Swiss Government has
a
moral
responsibility to appeal this ruling
and defend its laws against racism.
Switzerland was not a bystander of the
Armenian Genocide, and should not be a
bystander of the Armeni
an Genocide today.
On February 16
, 2014
a group of
scholars of Human Rights and Genocide
issued an open letter to the
Swiss
Justice
Minister
:
“We
do not take issue with the notion of
freedom of expression, something that
scholars agree is most often an essential
part of open, democratic society. We are,
however, concerned about elements of the
Court’s reasoning that a
re at odds with the
facts about the his
torical r
ecord on the
Armenian G
enocide of 1915, at odds with
an ethical understanding of denialism
...
We
believe it important that the government of
Switzerland request a re
e
xamination of the
Court
’
s judgment.
”
Taner Akçam
,
Clark University
Margaret Lavinia Anderson
,
University
of California Berkley
Joyce Apsel
, New York University
Yair Auron
, Open University of Israel
Peter Balakian
, Colgate University
Annette Becker
, University of Paris,
Institut Universitaire de France
Matthias Bjornlund
,
Danish Institute for
Stud
y Abroad
(DIS)
Donald Bloxham
, University of
Edinburgh
Professor Hamit Bozarslan
, Director,
EHESS, Paris
Cathy Caruth
, Cornell University
Frank Chalk
, Montreal Institute for
Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Israel Charny
, Past President
International
Association of Genocide
Scholars
(IAGS)
; Institute
on the
Holocaust and Genocide
Deborah Dwork
, Clark University
Helen Fein
, Independent Scholar
Marcelo Flores
, University of Siena
Donna
-
Lee Frieze
,
Deakin University,
David Gaunt
, Sodertorn University
Co
llege
Wolfgang Gust
, Independent Scholar,
Director armenocide.com.de
,
Hamburg
Herbert Hirsch
, Virginia Commonwealth
University; co
-
editor, Genocide Studies
International
Marianne Hirsch
, Columbia University
Tessa Hofmann
, Institute for East
European Studies
Richard Hovanissian
, Univers
ity of
California, Los Angeles
Raymond Kevorkian
, University of
Paris
-
VIII
-
Saint Denis
Hans
-
Lukas Kieser
, University of Zurich
Mark Levene
, University of
Southampton, UK
Robert Jay Lifton
,
Th
e City University
of New York
Deborah Lipstadt
, Emory
University
Wendy Lower
,
Claremont McKenna
College
Robert Melson
,
Purdue University; Past
President,
IAGS
Donald E. Miller
, University of Southern
California
A. Dirk Moses
, European University
Institute, Florence and Senior Editor,
Journal of Genocide Research
.
James R. Russell
, Harvard University
Roger W. Smith
,
College of William and
Mary; Past President,
IAGS
Leo Spitzer
,
Dartmouth College
Gregory Stanton
, George Mason
University; Past President,
IAGS
Yves Ternon
, Historian of modern
genocide, independent scholar, France.
Henry C. Theriault
, Worcester State
University; Co
-
Editor
-
in
-
Chief, Genocide
Studies and Pr
evention
Eric D. Weitz
, The City College of New
York/Graduate Center
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