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What is Genocide


The term Genocide was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, whose family was one of the victims of the Jewish Holocaust. By defining this term, Lemkin sought to describe Nazi politics of systematic murder, violence as well atrocities committed against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Combing ‘geno,’ from the Greek word for race or tribe, with ‘cide,’ from the Latin word for killing, he created the word ‘Genocide’. The following year, the International Military Tribunal at Nurenberg charged top Nazi officials with crimes against humanity. Although, the word Genocide was included in the indictment, it was as a descriptive and not as a legal term.

On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. See whole text Word file

The Convention defines Genocide as an international crime, which signatory nations undertake to prevent and punish. According to the Convention, Genocide is one of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a.     Killing members of the group;

b.     Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c.     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d.     Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e.     Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

After the adoption of the convention some scholars have suggested other more inclusive definitions.

In 1959 Pieter Drost, a legal scholar defined Genocide as “The deliberate destruction of physical life of individual human beings by reason of their membership of any human collectivity as such”.

Israel Charny, the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Genocide in two volumes, suggests that “Genocide in the generic sense is the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims”.

The UN convention does not include the killing of the members of political groups in the definition of Genocide, but many genocide scholars argued for the inclusion of that point in the definition. The prominent Genocide scholar and sociologist Leo Cuper noted that in the contemporary world, political differences are at least as significant a basis for massacre and annihilation as racial, national, ethnic or religious differences. In response to the omission of political groups from the Convention definition of Genocide, Ted Gurr and Barbara Harff have coined the new term Politicide.


VIRTUAL MUSEUM

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

genocide
Armenian Genocide:
Challenges on the Eve of Centenary

Ani plaza, Ani hall
Yerevan, March 22-23

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION

genocide
On April 23, 2012, AGMI presents a temporary exhibition titled “Book as a witness of the Genocide” dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the Armenian printing and proclamation of Yerevan as 2012 World Book Capital City by UNESCO. The temporary exhibition comprises more than 300 rare first editions and other sources on the subject of the Armenian Genocide.

SMYRNA DISASTER – 90

exhibition
In September 2012 AGMI presents a temporary exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of “Smyrna disaster” – destruction of the Christian population of Smyrna, one of the major sea ports of the Asia Minor. The fire of Smyrna becomes one of the dramatic episodes of the Armenian genocide carried out this time by Kemalist forces in September 1922.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE STUDIES  

Interntional Journal of AGS

REMEMBER

remember
Aghababyan Levon was born in 1887 in Baghesh and graduated from the Sanasaryan College. From 1908 to 1914 he was first a teacher then a headmaster at the national colleges of Akshehir and Kutahya. He was a teacher of mathematics, opened a private school in Kutahya which worked for only three years and also was an editor of “Azatamart”. He was a victim of the Armenian Genocide.

LEMKIN SCHOLARSHIP  

Lemkin

EVENTS OF AGMI

April 9, 2013 The Russian delegation headed by the Chief of Staff of the RF Presidential Administration Sergei Ivanov, which is in Armenia on the occasion of the inauguration of the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex and put flowers at the Memorial of the Armenian Genocide victims ...

December 18, 2012 The world known French actor Alain Delon visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex ...

November 24, 2012 The Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bashkiria Raphayil Zinurov Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex ...

November 24, 2012 The Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bashkiria Raphayil Zinurov Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex ...

September 25, 2012 Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex. Cardinal Kurt Koch put flowers at the Eternal Fire and prayed for the repose of the victims’ souls...

June 15, 2012 The delegation of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies (RISS), Moscow, headed by the director Leonid Reshetnikov and accompanied by Ruben Safrastyan...

May 1, 2012 Christos Malikkidas, the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Cyprus, visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex and put flowers at the Eternal...

April 24, 2012 Stephen W. Clark, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary and Elizabeth Morrison, Acting Senior Curator of...

April 21, 2012 Minister of culture of Romania, Mr. Hunor Kelemen visited Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex...

April 17, 2012 A group of Turkish participants of USAID supported program on Turkish-Armenian dialogue...

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