Yesterday the Polish Sejm unanimously passed a resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The document was initiated by the Sejm Presidium.
“The remembrance of the crimes of those years is a moral duty of all states and people of good will. In the process of Turkey’s integration in the EU the European Union demands the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide and establishment of relations with Armenia”, the document says in part.
The resolution is now awaiting consideration in the Senate.
The Armenian Genocide
The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during W.W.I are called the Armenian Genocide.
Genocide is the organized killing of a people for the express purpose of putting an end to their collective existence.
Because of its scope, genocide requires central planning and a machinery to implement it. This makes genocide the quintessential state crime as only a government has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction.
The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918.
The Armenian people was subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger.
Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions.
In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity.
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