We live in a world where violence and crimes against humans never cease to exist. Unfortunately, we aren’t always able to stop atrocities committed against innocent lives. What we can do is recognize these crimes and hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. By doing so, we prevent future massacres and annihilation. There is great danger in letting mass crimes against humanity go unrecognized.
A mass elimination of a certain group of people is defined as genocide. But there’s a labyrinth of legal principles underneath that basic definition, including what constitutes genocide and when the phrase may be used.
Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin combined the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill) and created the term genocide because he wanted international justice for his family who was murdered during the Holocaust. His advocacy led to the adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention in December 1948, which came into effect in January 1951.
The history of humankind has always been full of mass violence and atrocities. However, since the term has not been coined until after the Holocaust, many atrocities that have occurred before haven’t been called so.
And one of those genocides is the Armenian Genocide which was carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. It was the first genocide of the 20th century.
The Armenian Genocide has been documented by many foreigners. One of them is Armin Wegner, writer and photographer, who took photos of the deportations and massacres of the Armenians.
Wegner was a nurse in Poland and was sent to Turkey as a member of the German Sanitary Corps. As Wegner traveled through the Baghdad Railway, he noticed the Turkish army leading Armenians through the Syrian deserts. Wegner took more than two thousand photographs of the deportations and remains of the dead bodies by risking his own life. Secretly, he collected all the evidence he had and sent it to his contacts in Germany and the United States. Not only did he witness one of the most horrifying experiences in the world, but he spent the rest of his life fighting for justice for Armenians.
When Turkish officials discovered his work and his secret messages abroad, the German army was asked to arrest Wegner and most of his photographs were confiscated and destroyed. After endangering his own life to document the annihilation of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, Wegner spent the rest of his life fighting for human rights. He wrote an open letter to the President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, on the mass deportation of the Armenians into the Mesopotamian desert and published which cost him his job. It is thanks to Wegner that Armenians have visual evidence of the crimes committed against them in 1915.
Professor Taner Akçam of Clark University, Massachusetts, who has studied the genocide for decades, has discovered new documents from the Ottoman Archives which show initial decisions to exterminate Armenians which would be carried out by the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa). Bahaeddin akir and Nazm Bey established a force independent of the regular army in early 1914 comprising tribesmen (particularly Circassians and Kurds) as well as more than 10,000 condemned criminals—offered a chance to redeem themselves if they served the state—as a force capable of attacking civilians.
While Turkey now acknowledges that many Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians residing in the Ottoman Empire were killed in battles with Ottoman soldiers throughout the war, they continue to strongly deny the claims that the 1.5 million killings were planned and carried out in a systematic manner.
The Armenian Genocide is recognized by 31 countries in the world including the U.S., Russia and France. But the fight for justice continues as the Turkish government keeps denying it. And it doesn’t end with the Armenian Genocide.
The Yazidi Genocide was carried out by the Islamic State in the area of northern Iraq against the Yazidi people in 2014. The Rwandan Genocide was perpetrated by the Hutu militias against the Tutsi population in 1994. For these people too, the fight for justice also continues as they are trying to heal while seeking justice and international support.
This indifference to human life for political reasons is destructive for all of humanity because it allows new atrocities to be committed. Adolf Hitler, in 1939, just as the Holocaust was gearing up said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Different nations continue having conflicts today where innocent people lose their lives, their livelihoods and their homes. Surely this can’t just continue happening. Israel and Palestine, Ukraine and Russia, Uyghurs and China and so many other conflicts are still happening.
The world has always operated based on interests as it silently watches innocent people suffer. As citizens of the world, the least we can do is to educate ourselves, spread awareness, stand with the survivors and empathize with them.
