At the international scholarly conference “The Crime of Genocide: prevention, condemnation and liquidation of consequences,” Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan declared that “the attempt to hide your fault means a new crime. The lack of international mechanisms to prevent genocides, the denial of genocides on the part of different regimes, the impunity of genocides and indifference towards them lead to the threat of the recurrence of such crimes.» The two-day conference, which took place in Yerevan on December 14-15, was dedicated to the approval of the UN Convention “On Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” and was attended by scholars from over 20 countries.
COMMENTARY
Yurii SHAPOVAL, professor, Ph.D. (History):
“Here we should distinguish between two things. First, this is a statement of a politician. We remember that genocide in Armenia was triggered first of all by the political actions of [the Ottoman Empire]. This should be taken into consideration. The second side to this problem is that we should learn history’s lessons. What happened to Armenians in the early 20th century absolutely correlates with what happened in Ukraine in the 1930s. I don’t think that Ukraine should organize some demarches or statements in this concern. But we have a law adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, which should be respected. And there is still a lot to be done to make the circumstances of the Ukrainian Holodomor known in the world, the same way the Armenian tragedy became known.”
