© www.reporter.am The movement for reparations and a genuine settlement of the Armenian genocide
by Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D.
the Armenian Weekly, April 2010
by Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D.
the Armenian Weekly, April 2010
In Memory of Dennis Brutus, poet and activist South African Human Rights, 1924 - 2009
[Over the last five centuries of genocide, slavery, apartheid, mass rape, conquest and occupation imperial wars aggressive targeting non-combatants, expulsions of populations and other mass violations of human rights have proliferated. Each process has lasted for months, if not centuries. While the companies were mostly responsible for the traditional European states or the states of European settlement in Australia, Africa and the Americas, states and societies in Asia and Africa are also among them. These processes have been the decisive force that has shaped the demography, economy, political structures and forces, and the characteristics cultural world in which we live today, and the conflicts and challenges we face. For example, why the population of the United States is what it is - why African Americans are there, which have "disappeared" millions of Native Americans, why are the Vietnamese and Cambodians have immigrated to the U.S. States, etc.. - Needs to recognize the fundamental role of genocide, slavery and war in the formation of aggressive U.S. and regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia is affected by these phenomena.]
Around the world, people in poverty, victimized war after war, small groups of residues once numerous, and others realize that their current difficulties, their present poverty, the direct result of these powerful forces operating submission and destruction. Besides the irresistible logic of "necessary impartiality" - impartial treatment necessary for their physical survival and basic dignity as human beings - many acknowledge that the devastating effects of these past injustices must be addressed in a serious way, if their groups and companies can expect to exist in the future and sustainably. This recognition has led to various movements of repairs. Native Americans claim land withdrawn through a brutal conquest, genocide and a sham. African Americans require compensation for their contribution to a significant portion of the activity that built the United States, their work was stolen and paid back by the only cruelty, violence and destruction of individuals and communities. Formerly colonized societies, whose work was exploited to build Europe and North America, whose raw materials were stolen to provide resources and whose companies were "de-developed", are now struggling to survive, while the global societies of North, built from their losses, capitalizing on their depredations prior to consolidate their domination. And so on.
past decade, those involved in these battles began to become aware of their common cause and a global movement for reparations has emerged. In 2005, for example, the Worcester State College, Massachusetts, organized an international symposium on reparations, which was attended by Dennis Brutus, a famous activist for human rights, with papers on repairs under apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow - under slavery and African-American beyond - the genocide of Native Americans and the theft of land, the system of "comfort women" - sex slaves implemented by Japan, the overall use of debt instrument as "post-colonial" domination, and the Armenian genocide. While major repair process in the tens if not hundreds, in the world today, it may be instructive to study these cases in detail, as illustrations of the many battles.
Slavery in the United States destroyed African societies, exploiting and abusing millions of people for 250 years. At its abolition, he threw the former slaves in the U.S. economy, private land, capital and education. The initial recognition of the need to pay any compensation for slavery, to give former slaves a chance for economic self-sufficiency elementary aroused violent racism and discriminatory treatment. Former slaves were incorporated by force in the economic order at the lowest level. Wealth is preserved through the generations through inheritance. Those whose population began with little and n'asservissent or exploiting others, will remain with little. The movement for reparations for African Americans recognize that poverty, discrimination and other challenges facing African Americans today are the result of injustices perpetrated there for over 100 years, never been repaired as well as violence and discrimination racist later who were then preserved the status quo of the post-slavery.
The South African case revolves around the fact that while the world turned away from South Africa during the 1980s, the Afrikaner government borrowed money, especially in Switzerland, to continue finance apartheid. Against the international embargo, loans bankers were paying rifles and other military equipment used to kill black militants and keep their people in slavery. The end of slavery did not mean that debt. Today, South Africans live in poverty because their country is obliged to repay tens of billions U.S. $ loans contracted before, so keeping them in slavery. They also pay billions more for the pensions of military officials, police and government Afrikaner which rivers comfortable days after murdered with impunity, tortured and raped for decades. More, the U.S. and other multinationals have withdrawn huge profits from the labor of South Africans. Many victims of apartheid-related debt to reject these loans and require compensation for all they have suffered and all that they have been expropriated, as a fair way out of their society poverty. After years of rejection, the South African government itself has recently revised its position, based on a desire to curry favor large multinationals, and began supporting the court proceedings relating to reparations from multinationals enriched by apartheid.
the aftermath of decolonization, of societies devastated by decades if not centuries of occupation of exploitation, destruction of crops and families and genocide, found themselves in poverty and lacking the resources most basic, necessary to meet the minimum needs of their population. Suddenly forced to compete with those who had enriched and increased their cultural and military power through the settlement, they had no chance. Having no other choice but to borrow money in hopes of "catching up". But selfish and corrupt leaders have embezzled billions on private bank accounts (with the consent of former colonial powers), investing in public works or foolish and irrelevant if not monopolizing the money supposed to help these people. Donors such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, then imposed their conditions to precipitate these companies in a new enslavement to the economies of the United States and other major powers. Honor loans that have not helped their economies to grow back now to sacrifice public services and basic health care to these desperate companies and accept an external control scale on them in favor of the former colonizers and multinationals, and at the cost of further degradation of human dignity and physical conditions of their populations. Jubilee Movement calls for the obliteration Debt as a step forward towards justice under the devastation caused by colonialism and post-colonialism, and a transition towards a sustainable and equitable global economy.
The former "comfort women" have long been outraged dignity in their own countries and from Japan. They were often impoverished because of their terrible experience, raped thousands of times in rape camps permanent as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. Physical damage associated with these incessant forced sex and brutal violence to which these military tenders, consequences of a forced addiction to drugs and intense psychological trauma have frequently accompanied these women into old age. They needed medical care, and recognition of human injustice perpetrated against them. In the early 1990s, "comfort women" survivors began to demand reparations to address the consequences of what they had suffered.
Native Americans and Armenians share some similarities in their experiences and their current challenges, because of their crushing games and imperial conquests of powerful rival and successive, and a series of treaties broken or unfair and to a history of massacres, sexual violence and social destruction. Members of both groups were taken to death during the "long march". In the aftermath of a genocide perpetrated by means of active direct killing and deportations death, what remained of these people was even removed from their lands, through raids and destruction of hundreds of thousands to millions of graves Native Americans as part of a policy elite "science" of the United States, and the continued destruction of the Armenian Church and other remaining structures through Turkey. For Native Americans, the continued expropriation of land and resources, the blocking of social structures and demographic catastrophic destruction of these same populations (estimated at 97% in the United States on the mainland) have left the Indian nations subject the whims of government of the United States, forced to fight to preserve their identity and physical survival in a hostile world. Repairs, particularly with regard to traditional territories, are essential the survival of indigenous peoples and cultures. Similarly, lost its status as the largest minority in the Ottoman Empire a century ago, an Armenian population of less than 3 million people in the new republic faces a Turkey of 70 million people with resources tremendous economic, built on the plunder of wealth and land of the Armenians - via a genocide, preceded by a century of oppression and mass killings - and a huge military power gained from using the United States, in recognition of its regional power - also obtained by means of genocide. The Armenian diaspora, which has about 5 million members, is dispersed throughout the world, slowly losing its cohesion and its relevance, as powerful forces of assimilation and fragmentation take their share. Reparations in the form of compensation for looted wealth, we can identify in many cases families and business circles in Turkey today, as well as territorial and so emptied of Armenians " turkicization "through genocide, are crucial to the viability of society and the Armenian culture in the future. Without this kind of sanctuary that the Treaty of Sevres was supposed to give to the Armenians, a true regeneration is impossible: the Turkish government, always violently hostile to the Armenians, is growing every day, while Armenia residual post-genocidal decline.
course, repairs are not only to mitigate damage to human communities, to make possible in the future some semblance of recovery or survival, but it's important. The repairs are also a tangible recognition, material, permanent, beyond words, from the groups perpetrators or their descendants, the moral injustice of what has been done, and the dignity and legitimacy of human victims groups. They take the form of genuine apology and an act by which members who wrote the original infringement against the rights of man or who have taken advantage - economic, political, military, cultural and terms of security of the identity of individuals and groups - break decisively with the past and refuse to promote genocide, slavery, apartheid, mass rape, the imperial conquest and occupation, war aggressively focused on civilians, forced evictions and other forms of violations of human rights.
It is in this spirit that in 2007, Jermaine McCalpin, political scientist, who recently defended his doctoral thesis at Brown University [Providence, Rhode Island], a specialist long-term justice and the democratic transformation of societies after mass violations of human rights; Ara Papian, former Ambassador of Armenia in Canada and an expert in diplomatic history and law, Alfred de Zayas, a former lawyer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Petitions of support, and currently Professor of International Law at the Institute for Diplomatic Studies and International Relations in Geneva [Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations] and myself, met to consider the issue of reparations under the Armenian genocide in concrete terms. The Task Force on Reparations under the Armenian Genocide [Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group - AGRSG] resulted in an interim report on the legal justifications, diplomatic and ethical repairs and makes concrete proposals for the political process that will support real repairs.
International law clearly states that the groups who are entitled to compensation for the injuries committed against them. This applies to the Armenian genocide for two reasons. First, the acts committed against the Armenians are illegal under international law at the time of the genocide. Second, the United Nations Convention of 1948 on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide applies retroactively. Although the term "genocide" was not yet invented, when the Armenian genocide of 1915 was perpetrated, the Convention subsumes laws and existing international agreements relevant, such as the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. As genocide is illegal under both conventions, it remains illegal under the 1948. In addition, the Republic of Turkey today, as the successor of the Ottoman Empire and beneficiary of wealth and land expropriated by the 1915 genocide, has the responsibility to repair.
While the Treaty of Sevres of 1920, which recognized an Armenian state more extensive than exists today, has never been ratified, some elements keep the force of law and the treaty as such has not been superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. In particular, the delimitation of an Armenian state was undertaken pursuant to this treaty and decided by binding arbitration award. Whatever the final mode of ratification of this treaty, the procedure implemented by the commission to decide the award was accepted by the Contracting Parties to the Treaty, under international law, the resulting decision is legally law, whatever the ultimate fate of the treaty. This means that under international law, the so-called "Wilsonian borders" are the real borders of the Armenian state, which should exist today in Asia Minor.
Various arguments were moral wielded against repairs in general, especially for damage committed during the previous decades or centuries. Both are of considerable importance, namely that 1) a State and a contemporary society that have not committed a violation of mass human rights, but have merely succeeded to the state and society who were the authors do not bear the responsibility for this crime, or to repair the damage, because it would penalize innocent people, and 2) those that require repair in terms of land under the Armenian genocide implement a territorial nationalist irredentism of the same order as the Turkish nationalism, which led a turkicization land through genocide, which is illegitimate.
At the first objection, the report said that, because the current members of Turkish society benefit directly the destruction of Armenians in terms of increasing political and cultural power, and territory "Turkish" significantly more extensive and a large amount of personal wealth and state that were the basis for a series of economic developments, they have a connection with the genocide. Even if they can be morally criticized for that, they are responsible for the return of wealth and the application of compensations against Armenians to other dimensions of genocide. A second objection, the report said that the lands in question became "Turkish "Under the project specifically ultranationalist genocide. Maintain the land so "turcisées indicates an implicit approval of this genocidal ultra-nationalism, while raising their control in Turkey is the only path leading to a rejection of this ideology.
addition to legal arguments, political and ethical justifications repairs, the report also proposes a complex model in the political process to determine and carry out repairs. The report highlights the fact that material reparations and symbolic reparations, including apologies and dissemination of truth on what happened in 1915, and the rehabilitation of the corporation commission, are essential components of a process of repair, with regard to achieving a stable and respectful of human rights. The report proposes to convene a Commission on Truth and repairs under the Armenian Genocide, involving Turkey, Armenia and others who work to promote both a set of feasible repair and rehabilitation process conditioning repairs to a democratic transformation positive, respectful of others, state and society Turkish. Both repairs constitute a settlement of the legacy of the Armenian genocide, as they will be an opportunity for productive social change in Turkey, which will benefit the Turks.
Finally, the report submit preliminary recommendations for financial compensation and reparations land as such. The first is based in part on the detailed estimate of repairs prepared within the framework of the Peace Conference of Paris [1919], plus the additional consideration of items that were not sufficiently covered during this same conference, by taking into account the material losses suffered by financial Armenians. The report also considering several options regarding the restitution of land, the symbolic restitution of churches and other cultural property in Turkey to make full restitution of the territories covered by the award Wilsonian. The report includes the highly innovative option of allowing Turkey to maintain political sovereignty over the territories in question, but the demilitarizing and enabling Armenians to join the current residents, while enjoying political protection and commercial and residential rights in their entirety. This model is interesting, partly because it offers a conception of politics that respects human rights, post-national, that could be considered as part of a transition out of territorial aggressive brand of nationalism - the type adopted by the Young Turks - which often occurs if genocides and conflicts.
On May 15, 2010, the Study Group on Reparations under the Armenian Genocide [Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group - AGRSG] will officially present the report at a public event at the Institute of Analysis and Conflict Resolution, near George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.
[ Henry C. Theriault has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts (1999), specializing in social and political philosophy. Since 1998 he teaches philosophy at Worcester State College. Since 2007 he is deputy editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention . His research focuses on a philosophical approach to issues of genocide, particularly denial, critical thinking and the criteria for demonstrating the long-term justice, analysis ethical motivations of perpetrators, as well as the role of violence against women in genocide. Among his publications: "Rousseau, Plato, and Western Philosophy's Genocidal Anti-Strain" [The anti-genocide in Rousseau, Plato, and in Western philosophy], in Metacide: Genocide In The Pursuit of Excellence , ed. James R. Watson and Erik M. Vogt (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, published in 2010 - translator's note) "The Albright-Cohen Report: From Fantasy to Realpolitik Realist Ethics," Genocide Studies and Prevention 4.2 (August 2009); and "Genocide, Denial and Denomination: Armenian-Turkish Relations From Conflict Resolution to Just Transformations" National University of Rwanda Center for Conflict Management Journal , April 2009.]
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Courtesy of KM, editor of the Armenian Weekly .
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