The mission of LMU Loyola Law School's Center for the Study of Law and Genocide has been, for more than a decade, to promote the use of international law and international tribunals in order to achieve a measure of justice for the victims, survivors, and even the descendants of those who have suffered genocide and mass atrocities. Recognition, accountability, and memorializing of the horrors of the past are integral to these aspirations.
In light of this mission, we feel the need to voice our deep concern at the escalating violent conflict in the Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh region and in particular the involvement of the Turkish Republic. Given the historical context, the danger of old hatreds and bigotries reemerging, with all its perilous consequences, is palpable and cannot be ignored or underestimated. For more than a century, Turkey has refused to acknowledge its perpetration of genocide against Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire of the early 20th century. Many of the descendants of that genocide are being targeted today. For Turkey to actively participate in this conflict at the expense of the same long-victimized Armenian ethnic and religious minority is particularly disturbing.
While the evidence may yet be inconclusive that a genocide is now in progress, there are reliable reports that Turkey is not only supplying Azerbaijan with advanced weaponry, but is also contributing mercenaries fresh off the battlefield from Syria and Libya. Armenian churches and schools have not been spared, and may even have been targeted. The Genocide Center exists in part to inform – that from just such beginnings mass tragedies have grown. Failure to recognize one such potential danger risks the normalization and spread of such conduct.
In the words of Founding Director and Professor of Law Stanley Goldman, “Having lost much of my family, including my brother and sister, in the Nazi gas chambers, I hope to hear at a minimum a merciful response from the world in general and Turkey in particular to that intended rhetorical query posed 81 years ago in Germany: ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’”
For further information and resources, see:
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