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TGTE congratulates the Biden Administration for recognizing the Armenian Genocide from Spring 1915 to Autumn 1916. Approximately 1.5 million Armenians were brutally physically annihilated through massacres, displacement, starvation, and ill-treatment. We the Eelam Tamils stand in solidarity with the Armenians. The recognition of the Armenian genocide by the U.S. government is long overdue. The recognition is heavily due to the resilient activism of the Armenian diaspora. We applaud the Biden Administration's moral courage to put human rights at the center of their foreign policy even when there are adverse geopolitical consequences.
The Ottoman Empire's "rationale" that Armenians might side with Russia during the First World War did not vitiate the specific intent to wipe out the Armenians. The Ottoman Turk's "justification" that their barbaric massacre was a "necessary measure" against Armenian separatism does not mitigate the cruelty and the barbarism of the crime of genocide.
The primary purpose of the recognition of the genocide is not to simply pass the blame on the evil entity but to ensure it will not happen anywhere in the world. It is a proactive measure. As President Biden that the remembering of the lives of the victims of genocide is to recommit ourselves to preventing such an activity from occurring ever again. He emphasized that "we do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated". Indeed, as the title of the Genocide Convention demonstrates, that the Convention was designed not only for the punishment of the crime of genocide but also to prevent the commission of genocide. Article 1 of the Genocide Convention states that State Parties have a duty to prevent genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Bosnian genocide case affirmed this legal obligation.
Let's try together to create a genocide free world.
(This article was published in Fortnightly Magazine 'Abel', May 29, 2021)
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