The Armenian Genocide. Lest we forget.

Robertson defines, elaborates and explains the how and the why of the Ottoman government’s policy of extermination of its Christian minorities.

He examines in great detail the history of the Ottoman Empire and pays attention to the status of dhimmis. This is best summed up as Islamic Apartheid, in essence, tolerated infidels: non-Muslims living under Muslim rulers and subject to legislative discrimination in employment, taxation and religious assembly. Basically, guests in their own homes.

Robertson introduces vast amounts of evidence from eyewitness accounts of the appalling events.  Much of this was well documented at the time by Western diplomats: Americans, British and French amongst others. The Ottomans’ natural allies, the Germans, officially kept schtum in Berlin while their subordinates on the ground wrote in great detail about eastern Anatolia turning into the world’s biggest abattoir.

Robertson looks at the law, applies the law, studies the politics of the time (and of our time) and proves beyond reasonable doubt that what was planned and executed between 1915 and 1923 was legally “genocide”.

Turkish denials notwithstanding.

Interestingly in 1943 the very term “genocide” was coined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe the atrocities of the worst kind, specifically those committed against the Armenians.

It is imperative to understand the immorality and the harm of denying genocide. As the prominent scholar of genocide, Peter Balakian in “Combating Denials of the Armenian Genocide in Academia” in Encyclopedia of Genocide Volume I notes: “the denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide; it seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators; and denying genocide paves the way the way for future genocides by making it clear that genocide demands no moral accountability or response.”

Altuğ Taner Akçam, historian and sociologist, is one of the first Turkish intellectuals to acknowledge and openly discuss the Armenian Genocide and holds the only endowed chair dedicated to research and teaching on this subject at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. His book, A Shameful Act : The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility was championed by Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist, Nobel Prize winner in Literature and outspoken critic of Turkey’s official genocide denial who in 2006 called the book "the definitive account of the organised destruction of the Ottoman Armenians”.

The West’s deplorable silence on the systematic decimation 100 years ago of 1.5 million Christians from the country to first adopt at Christianity as the state religion in 301A.D. continues by the majority of nations the world over, including the United States, despite grass roots efforts to have this horror recognised.

Most recently, candidate for President of the United States, Barack Obama, the cunning politician that he is, in a letter dated January 2008 ingratiated himself with the Armenian communities of central and southern California, admitting there was genocide committed by the Otttomans. But suddenly when he became President he changed to ape the deniers and refused to use the G-word.

Two state governments in Australia and 43 states the United States have discovered the courage to stand up to vested interest groups and explicitly recognised the Genocide. But it’s national governments that matter.

On the topic, the associated annihilation by the Ottomans of almost one million Greeks and three hundred thousand Assyrians also demands urgent recognition.