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PICTURES

The United Nations’ Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of Genocide, ratified by 92 states established:

"In the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in the part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of this group to another group".

The UN Convention states that the occurrence of either one of the above

mentioned points is a genocide. The Armenian genocide included all these acts committed together systematically and thoroughly by the Turkish government thus committing the first genocide of the 20^th century.

The History of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire was one which could be named as a continuous genocide which reached its peak between 1915-1918 when more than 1,500,000 Armenians were massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. This Genocide which removed the bulk of the Armenian population from its historical homeland was the result of a long and careful planning by the Turkish government to end the Armenian Question, once and for all.

Since the mid-19^th century and on, the Armenians oppressed in the Ottoman Empire repeatedly demanded for reforms in areas largely populated by them but the Ottoman Sultans responded by increasing the harassment and ordering massacres of Armenians to an extent that until 1909 about 400,000 Armenians were killed.

The first World War gave the Young Turks, who had overthrown the Sultan, the perfect alibi to settle the Armenian Question for good. Even before the outbreak of the war the Young Turks had planned a systematic way exterminating the Armenian population of Anatolia whose only fault was that they were the only non-Turanic people who were a barrier on the road of achieving a pan-Turanic nation from Constantinople to Central Asia.

At the beginning all the Armenian males between the ages 18-40 were mobilized in the Ottoman Army and after labouring as road construction were ruthlessly massacred. Then the turn came to the women, the old and the children, who were grouped and deported to the deserts of Mesopotamia and on the way they were attacked, raped and killed by criminals, who were released from the prisons by the government for this purpose. When he deported caravans reached their destinations, only one-tenth of the deportees were left.

In an official census in the Ottoman Empire before the outbreak of war Armenians numbered about 2,250,000 after the war 300,000 left for the Russian part of Armenia while another 400,000, who were mainly the survivors of the caravans, found refuge in Syria and Lebanon then in France, United States and throughout the world. The others were ruthlessly massacred in completion of the overall plan.

After the war, when Turkey was defeated the survivors of the Armenian Genocide hoped that at last the crimes of the Turks would be punished. But alas nothing of that kind happened. Moreover the successors of the Young Turks continue to negate the occurrence of any such massacres. But the Armenians throughout the world persist on claiming for their rights and the rights of those 1,500,000 Armenians who were massacred between 1915-1918.

The Armenian Genocide still awaits its "Nuremberg Trials". The impunity of the Turks undermines the concept of International Justice and Moral Law.

It is an offense against any civilized man on earth.