Why Genocide Happens Again and Again
Screaming in a void
The day of April 24 beckons but not like a beacon. It is a day filled with sorrow for anyone with Armenian ancestry. On April 24, 1915, the Turkish government arrested over 200 intellectuals and business leaders. That day marks the beginning of the darkest time in Armenian history. It was the day the genocide began.
As I write this article, it is April 20, and the 107th anniversary of the Armenian genocide is four days away. My mind can’t help but think about Ukraine where the Russian military is carrying out what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls a genocide. We cry “never again” every year around this time, and genocide happens again and again.
It seems we Armenians scream about the genocide in a void. We keep pointing out that the country which perpetrated genocide against our ancestors still denies it. When President Biden became the first president to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as genocide, Turkish President Recep Erdogan said, “The U.S. President has made baseless, unjust, and untrue remarks about the sad events that took place in our geography over a century ago.”
Turkish denial emboldens genocidal regimes
No one listens to us when we explain that Turkey’s continued genocide denial gives a green light to regimes to practice ethnic cleansing. Take the genocide perpetrated against the Rohingya of Myanmar, who were denied citizenship in 1982, making them the biggest stateless ethnic group in the world. In 2017, the Myanmar military began to kill, rape, and burn down the homes of the Rohingya. During the first month of the genocide, 6,000 people were killed. Hundreds of thousands fled Myanmar.
In 2020, the Myanmar government responded to the ruling of the UN’s International Court of Justice that ordered the country to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya with denial. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the ruling was a “distorted picture of the situation.” The country claimed that its Independent Commission of Enquiry ruled that no genocide occurred in its Rakhine state.
Myanmar’s denial of the Rohingya genocide sounds like Turkey’s continued denial of the Armenian genocide. Denial begets more genocides. In November 2020, regional forces in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray region, in coordination with the federal government, launched attacks to take control of the area. A report by Human Rights Watch characterizes the attacks as “ethnic cleansing, carried out through crimes against humanity and war crimes, targeting Tigrayan civilians in Western Tigray since the war began in November 2020.”
The world lacks the resolve to stop genocide
It took until 2019 before the U.S. Congress formally recognized the Armenian genocide and 2021 before President Biden did as well. That it took so long testifies to the world’s lack of resolve in preventing genocide. As Zelensky cries out for a no-fly zone to stop Russian air attacks on civilians, NATO countries refuse his request. And yes, I acknowledge the geopolitical realities of enacting a no-fly zone. But what will it take to grant Zelensky’s request? How many more Ukrainians have to die?
When will the world start listening to Armenians? When will it acknowledge that genocides can and must be prevented? How many more genocides must happen before the world obtains a backbone?
