The recent furore over the passing of a resolution by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, accepting the events of 1915 as a “genocide” with 27 votes for and 21 votes against, has made people forget that many countries, including parts of the USA, have already defined events as such.

 In the USA, forty of the fifty states accept the events of 1915-1917 as a “genocide”. Although Turkey is now working towards the resolution not being passed by the complete House of Representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in firm support of the resolution. 

 In some countries there have been symbolic decrees to remember and condemn the terrible experiences of Armenians at the time. ın other countries, the denial of a genocide may be pursued legally. For instance, Argentina has passed many decisions, such as the one to acknowledge a “genocide”, to demand that Turkey and the United Nations do so, too, and to include the events in school curricula.

18 parliamentary resolutions 

Particularly since 2005, the parliaments of several countries have decided to officially recognise the events of 1915 as a “genocide”.

There are eighteen countries who have passed such decisions in parliament:

Uruguay: 1965, 2004, 2005; Southern Cyprus: 1982; Argentina: 1993, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007; Russia: 1995, 2005; Canada: 1996, 2000, 2004; Greece: 1996; the Lebanon: 1997, 2000; Belgium: 1998; Italy: 2000; the Vatikan: 2000; France: 2001; Switzerland: 2003; Slovakia: 2004; Holland: 2004; Poland: 2005; Venezuela: 2005; Lithuania: 2005; Chile: 2007.

Other recognition 

Sweden, Austria and Armenia have recognised the 1915 events as a “genocide” without a parliamentary decision, and the German parliament passed a decision in 2005 to “remember the Armenians who were exposed to violence and forced emigration and killed before the First World War”. While the Germans do not use the term “genocide”, the parliament has said that “some independent historians, institutions and parliaments have described these events as genocide.”

Apart from the Federal government, Canada’s states of Quebec and Ontario also recognise a “genocide”. Australia’s state parliament of New South Wales recognised and condemned the “genocide” in 1997.

In Brazil, the states of Ceara and Sao Paolo have accepted a “genocide.

In 2007, the Basque parliament passed a similar resolution.

According to the law passed in France in 2006, a denial of the “Armenian genocide” is punished with imprisonment and fines.

A draft brought to the Bulgarian parliament in 2006 was voted against because of the reactions of Turkish MPs. (EÜ/NZ/AG)

* This news item has used information from Wikipedia, Agos, BBC, the Guardian, the American Armenian National Committee and the Los Angeles Times.