508) Applying the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention to Armenians

"Genocide Scholars" such as Israel Charny claim Turkey conducted a genocide under the regulations of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide. (For example, as Charny wrote in a 2005 open letter to Turkish leader Erdogan.) Since Charny is a "genocide scholar," one would think he would at least be an expert on what the 1948 Convention says, since Charny in particular has shown little evidence of being a scholar in most everything else. (See "Revealing the true identity of the sham 'genocide expert' Dr. Israel Charny," evidently written by a fellow Israeli, at the bottom of this page.) . . .

Let's examine more closely the requirements of the U.N. Convention.

Armenian Diaspora's Accusing Turkey Of Genocide Is A Legal Crime

ANKARA - ''Armenian diaspora's accusing Turkey of genocide is a legal crime,'' Sukru Elekdag, MP of the main opposition party --Republican People's Party (CHP)-- said on Thursday.


Sukru Elekdag
Speaking at an international symposium held at Ankara's Gazi University on ''Turkish-Armenian Relations and 1915 Incidents'', Elekdag said, ''those who advocate Armenian thesis, cannot prove their allegations within the context of the United Nations Conventions on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Article 4 of the Convention says that only persons and public officials can be accused of genocide, not juristic persons or states. Also, Article 6 of the same convention says that those allegations should be determined by competent tribunals.''

''Parliaments of several countries decided to recognize so-called Armenian genocide by violating the United Nations Convention. A decision made by violating international laws does not have any legal ground. The law does not define the 1915 incidents as crime of genocide. Therefore, an undefined act cannot be considered crime. This is the principle of 'there is no crime without law'. Under all these principles, it is impossible to describe the 1915 incidents as genocide, and to accuse the Ottoman Empire and Turkey of genocide. Those allegations have both political and legal dimensions. Therefore, a court of arbitration should be formed to deal with the issue,'' he said.

(Source misplaced)

A competent tribunal was set in motion, to find individual Ottomans guilty of massacres. This was the Malta Tribunal. It never went to trial, because for over two years, its administrators could not find evidence for conviction. The archives of several nations were searched, including the archives of the United States, and certainly the archives of the Ottoman Empire, which was under the control of the British occupying Istanbul. Every accused was set free at the end.

"Nullum Crimen"


Along with the the principle of 'there is no crime without law,' as stated above, is the principle of Nullum Crimen.

The principle called "Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali" is a basic maxim in continental European legal thinking,and recognized in virtually all modern democracies. It was authored by Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach as part of the Bavarian Code in 1813. This maxim states that there can be no crime committed, and no punishment meted out, without a violation of penal law as it existed at the time. This basic legal principle has been incorporated into international criminal law. It thus prohibits the creation of ex post facto laws.

What this basically means is that penal law cannot be enacted retroactively, for an offense not existing when that offense was committed ("nullum crimen"); that is, one cannot be penalized for doing something that isn't prohibited by law.

Apart from it, the alleged acts against Armenians in 1915 do not constitute the crime of genocide because International law did not prescribe it as the crime of genocide in 1915. Moreover, if we apply logic to generality then, “the killing of Jesus on (the) cross constitutes the crime (of) torture under the European Convention on Human Rights”. How (is it) consistent with ... common sense? How can you apply the present concepts retroactively? How could any reasonable person argue that (the) British Empire’s occupation of Egypt in (the) 1800(s) constitutes the crime of aggression? Was that act considered aggression at that time?
Nurlan, http://genocide.com/


More 1948 U.N. Convention Requirements

Other requirements:

"INTENT" must be proven. That's the magic word. The only evidence put forth implicating the Ottoman government of the INTENT of systematically destroying the Armenians has been the Aram Andonian documents. These have been proven to be forgeries.


"There is no crime without evidence. A genocide cannot be written about in the absence of factual proof."

Henry R. Huttenbach, history professor who appears to support the Armenian viewpoint exclusively, as do... curiously... nearly all so-called "genocide scholars"; The Genocide Forum, 1996, No. 9


"POLITICAL ALLIANCES" are exempted. The Armenians allied themselves with the enemies of their Ottoman nation. "I must emphasize the fact, unhappily known to few, that ever since the beginning of the war the Armenians fought by the side of the Allies on all fronts." (Boghos Nubar)

The U.N. Itself has Refused to Designate this Episode as a Genocide


Propagandist-Activists like Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, are still going around claiming the United Nations has recognized their genocide. This is a falsehood.

In 1985, a pro-Armenian rapporteur who was part of a U.N. sub-committee, Benjamin Whitaker, attempted to force this issue down the U.N.'s throat. (Sassounian was one of the activists involved.) The issue was debated, and Whitaker's report was refused. The details may be read in this article, "The Truth About the Whitaker Report." Genocide websites such as preventgenocide.org, unethically or ignorantly, have put up this report, bearing the opinion of its author, as if the Armenian Genocide were officially accepted by the United Nations.

Here is the truth, established after 1985:

"(The) United Nations has not approved or endorsed a
report labeling the Armenian experience as Genocide."

Farhan Haq, U.N. spokesman, October 5th, 2000.

On June 4-7, 2005, at a Florida Atlantic University genocide conference, Juan Mendez, Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide to the Secretary General of the United Nations, was criticized for calling the Armenians' genocide an "event." This article tells us that the Argentinian "responded that since the UN has not officially recognized the genocide, he was not allowed to call it that."

As reader Conan put it: "The UN is the organ that has established the Genocide Convention. If even such an institution doesn’t recognize the Armenian genocide, Turkey has the right to punish the so called Armenian genocide as libel. That is the right of every nation."

A Genocide Conference Deals with INTERNATIONAL LAW

The following is from a program of a genocide conference, the details for which weren't handy. Nevertheless, there were some interesting ideas. See what you think. (The emphases are mine.)


Session Five: Implications for International Relations [Saturday 9-10:30]
P. Terrence Hopmann (Brown University): Chair
Gerard J. Libaridian: "An Assessment of Armenian-Turkish Relations"
Xxx: "The Turkish Position"
Xxx: Discussant


GENOCIDES, WAR CRIMES AND INTERNATIONAL LAW:

International Law appears to be undergoing significant readjustments, through a process of trials and errors and in response to the dynamic changes taking place in the international world and economic order. Many of the changes point to a compromise of the hitherto theoretically absolute sovereignty of the "nation-state". New concepts of international sanctions are emerging, and efforts are made to build or strengthen international courts and fact gathering independent organizations.

The diplomatic struggle that takes around the Armenian "Genocide" has important bearings on the search for new international legal concepts and for a revised and more autonomous international legal system:

The concept of "Genocide" as a crime entered the international law in 1951, by an act of the United Nations General Assembly. It was not until 1993 that the United Nations was able to establish the War Crimes Tribunal to investigate and prosecute people involved in crimes against humanity, including genocide. From a purely legal point of view, is it possible to "try" a case that occurred in 1915-16 on the basis of a "law" established in 1951 and in a court established in 1993, or in any "court" or legislative organ for that matter.

There would be sufficient evidence to make criminal charges against the Unionist Ottoman government of the Great War years on the basis of international conventions of which it was a signatory, namely the conventions about the obligation to protect civilian lives in war times. Perhaps we can make similar charges against the revolutionary Ankara government for the offenses against civilian Armenians living under its jurisdiction in 1919-23. However, can we charge a government for the crimes committed by the one it succeeded not in any peaceful way but because of a radical defiance of and rebellion against its authority? What are the criteria to determine the continuity of responsibility from one regime to the next in a given territory? One would presume, from a purely legal point of view, that one has to look at the international treaties that recognized the establishment of a new regime for answers to the question of the continuity of responsibility. If so, there would be little ground to make a case against the Republic of Turkey for what happened in 1915-16 or 1895-1918.

Let us presume that we can think of other legal criteria to link the Republic of Turkey to the Ottoman State concerning the flagrant offenses against peaceful and civilian Armenians. Will we (and can we) then apply the same criteria uniformly to all the other cases of flagrant offense against civilian and peaceful people that occurred in the same era, as one would expect in legal matters? Would not the list of such crimes committed by extinct or extant governments be a very long one, even if we limited ourselves to the modern era alone, as suggested above?

Perhaps we should focus our energies to the development and strengthening of international legal principles and institutions that would help prevent the recurrence of genocides and similar offenses against humanity. In that case, past incidents should still provide us with the necessary insight as well as the necessary moral resolve to develop legal principles and institutions that would be effective in preventing similar atrocities in the future.

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