March 4, 2010; it’ll become a significant day in the history of Armenia, as on this special day US House Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted Armenian Genocide Resolution with a difference of one vote. During a 1,5-hour discussion 23 congressmen voted for the Resolution and 22 against it. Recall that U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted resolutions with similar contents in 2000, 2005 and 2007 but they were not pushed for
a final vote in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the Swedish (Rikstag) Parliament decided with least possible margin on the 12th of March, 2010. By a vote of 131 to 130 the opposition’s reservations became victorious over the committee’s proposal. For this to be possible required four centre-right members to vote against their own parties. The massacre of Armenians and other ethnic groups in 1915 was Genocide. The government’s line was to not classify the massacre of, among others, Assyrians and Armenians as genocide as it should not be up to politicians to write history. Armenians have been living since the 5th century BC between Anatolia and the Caucasus, a territory that has alternatively experienced great empires and kingdoms “from sea to sea”. The fall of Byzantium, the setting up of the Ottoman Empire and the settling of ever more numerous Kurds in these parts radically transformed the setting for history’s first Christian people.
A minority protected in theory by the “Millet” status, the Armenians were subjected to heavy taxes in the rural zones of Anatolia where in 1914 in some provinces they made up the majority of the population. When Armenians first started to demand autonomy at the end of the 19th century, the first response by the Ottoman authorities was the series of massacres. The culmination day was on 24 April 1915 when 1,5 million Armenians were slaughtered; over 600 intellectuals, doctors and priests were arrested, deported and progressively eliminated. The governments of countries opposed to Germany sent a text of condemnation to the Sublime Door, referring for the first time in history to “crimes against humanity”. The protests were of no avail. After the fall of the Empire, those responsible for the acts were tried, but the sentences, especially in the case of Talaat Pacha and two other members of the triumvirate that organized the genocide, were not strictly carried out and were often pronounced in absentia. Countries officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide include: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, Vatican, Venezuela, France, Uruguay, Argentina, Netherlands, Slovakia, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, Lebanon, Sweden, Belgium, U.S., Greece, Cyprus, Great Britain as well as Council of Europe, European Parliament.