Victims Of Genocide Research Articles

On the Repeatable Human Victim and Perpetrator in Genocide

This article is concerned with how we meet the victim of genocide in the middle of experience. François Laruelle, in Théorie générale des victimes (2012), suggests that to think the victim is a work of resurrection rather than remembrance. To think the victim should allow us to recognize that the victim, especially the victim for who they are as such, is always human in the last instance—a repeatable victim. With this thesis, the article begins with the definition of the crime of genocide adopted by the United Nations to examine how knowledge production is involved in cyclical violence. The second part of the essay thinks the victim of genocide through a subversion of Jean-Luc Marion’s limit concept of the saturated phenomenon, sans transcendence. The essay concludes that in this lived realization, weakness and compassion seize to return the victim to their suffering and instead, hope to change the world.

Prawo spadkowe vs. sprawiedliwa sukcesja obiektów dziedzictwa kulturowego?

The law of inheritance vs. the just succession of the cultural property? Heirless property in European countries is typically inherited by the state. However, the routine application of this rule to assets belonging to victims of the German genocide during WWII continues to raise doubts. The recognition of a moral responsibility towards Holocaust victims in the Terezin Declaration legitimates the international debate on tensions between inheritance law and justice. The lack of a universal model for the succession of heirless Jewish cultural property acknowledged by this Declaration provokes different recommendations. One of the possibilities is the collective cultural restitution notion as a countermeasure to the crime of cultural genocide. This theory links the reinterpretation of the concept of genocide presented by Lemkin in 1944 with the restitution actions of Jewish succession organizations in 1940s and 50s. The theory mentioned is challenged in the article. The analysis is based on historical arguments, i.e. Lemkin’s focus on criminal liability and the specific nature of legal grounds for Jewish succession organizations after WWII. The history of inheritance law provides arguments to recommend another innovative way of dealing with the heirless property forming part of genocide victims’ inheritance. It is reasonable to distinguish between solutions pro futuro and those possible today. The paper concludes with a recommendation to supplement the Genocide Convention with specific rules about the heirless property of genocide victims. The state responsible for committing genocide should be eliminated from the inheritance of bona vacantia in favour of local successor organizations appointed by an international penal tribunal. Cultural property should be excluded from universal succession in the case of genocide and regarded as a legal person that continues victims’ remembrance. Currently, this model can inspire Polish policy regarding heirless Jewish cultural property. It should be focused on three goals: for objects to remain in Poland, the creation of a new complex database of objects accessible online and, if possible, the exhibition of objects alongside information about their last respective owners who died heirless.

“There We Are Nothing, Here We Are Nothing!”—The Enduring Effects of the Rohingya Genocide

Debates continue as to whether crimes committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar amount to genocide. This article will address this question, framed in the broad context of the Rohingya victimisation in Myanmar, but also the narrow context of the Rohingya refugee lived experience in Malaysia. The authors contend that the Rohingya are victims of genocide, and this is in part evidenced by the destruction of the Rohingya culture, including through assimilation (and therefore loss of group identity) in refugee destination countries, such as Malaysia. This analysis is based on the consideration of theories of genocide process and definition, international law, and qualitative data collected during extensive anthropological fieldwork by one of the authors with urban refugees in peninsular Malaysia.

Genocide, Mass Atrocity, and Theories of Crime: Unlocking Criminology's Potential

Surprisingly, scholars studying mass atrocity and genocide have frequently sidelined criminological theories and concepts. Other disciplines have addressed these crimes while mostly ignoring criminological insights and theories. In this review, we assess the potential of criminological theories to contribute to explaining and preventing mass atrocities and genocide, highlight criminological insights from the study of these crimes, and unlock the existing criminological knowledge base for application in the context of these crimes. We begin by outlining how mass atrocities and genocide are similar to other crimes that criminologists have routinely studied. We then turn toward frameworks of structural causation, focusing on the state and community levels. Subsequently, we address microlevel theories that inform why individuals commit such violence, ranging from theories of choice, the life course, and techniques of neutralization to social learning theory and theories of desistance from crime. Finally, we address the victims of genocide and mass atrocity, including the factors associated with victim labels and victimhood itself.

Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru

Peru’s national health program Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PSRPF) aimed to uphold women’s reproductive rights and address the scarcity in maternity related services. Despite these objectives, during PSRPF’s implementation the respect for women’s rights were undermined with the forced sterilization of women predominantly of indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds. This study considers the forced sterilization of indigenous women as a genocide. Making the case for genocide has not been done previously with this particular case. Using the normative markers of the Genocide Convention, this study categorically sets forced sterilization victims from the state-led-policy as victims of genocide, considering the effects the health malpractice had on victims’ reproductive rights and the prevention of births of future indigenous populations. In doing so, this study proves the genocidal intent from the state to destroy in whole or in part, an ethnic minority group.

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

ABSTRACT Accounting for the dead after a humanitarian catastrophe is often fraught with methodological and/or political pitfalls. The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is a case in point. A UN Commission of Experts estimated that between April and July 1994 at least 500,000 civilians had been murdered. The post-genocide Rwandan government soon made clear that foreign help with demographic and forensic investigations was neither appreciated nor needed, and proceeded with its own counts of genocide victims. The article critically examines these counts; contrasts them with accounting efforts after the Bosnian conflict of the mid 1990s; compares the official Rwandan numbers with scholarly estimates; proposes an alternative method for calculating the death toll; and concludes that the official death toll roughly doubled the number of genocide victims. The article provides insight into how history is written in the new Rwanda.

The Muselmann and the Necrotopography of a Ghetto

ABSTRACT This article revises the status, function, linguistic origin, and experiential meaning of the emaciated figure of the Muselmann through a reading of Holocaust diaries, archival photography, as well as the post-Holocaust literature; the reading establishes certain similarities between the Muselmann and other victims of Nazi genocide. It reconstructs necrotopography as a common denominator of diverse Holocaust hostile spaces of confinement, in which dead bodies constitute the terrain’s main features. The article purports that death in the necrotopograhic spaces was caused by starvation and exploitation as well as by solitude and isolation. For a contemporary reader/viewer, necrotopography represents the return of the Holocaust affect in its most visceral way.

Could the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Have Erred in a Major Exhibit?

Not long after the Nazi takeover of Germany and proclamation of their Jewish agenda, Armenian propaganda efforts were directed toward establishing a linkage between their own historical experiences and those of European Jewry. Following WWII the cornerstone in the Armenian case has been Adolf Hitler's purported remark “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This sentence is widely known, quoted, taught, and believed worldwide. National and local governments in several countries have used it to justify resolutions declaring that the alleged slaughter of Armenians by Turks was genocide. The veracity of this statement, however, cannot be confirmed anywhere in the transcripts of evidence admitted into record by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Quite the contrary. Transcripts of the speech in which that statement was supposedly made by Hitler on August 22, 1939, and admitted into evidence are devoid of that sentence. Believed to be Hitler’s justification for the invasion of Poland and his “final solution,” that sentence may, in fact, be a contrived statement. Using archival documents, this paper casts doubt upon the veracity of that statement and questions the validity of its use on a USHMM wall in a memorial to victims of genocide. These findings are put into the context of the Armenians’ use of terror as part of a propaganda campaign. This campaign began in the second half of the 19th century, for the purpose of alerting western countries to their victimization and encouraging the west of the need to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. One outcome of WWI. This paper relies on various archival documents including contemporaneous articles from the New York Times and Western diplomatic dispatches as well as writings by ethnic Armenian historians in both the US and the USSR.

Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan's Colonial Peoples by Kirsten L. Ziomek

Reviewed by: Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan's Colonial Peoples by Kirsten L. Ziomek E. Taylor Atkins (bio) Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan's Colonial Peoples. By Kirsten L. Ziomek. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge MA, 2019. xix, 426 pages. $70.00, cloth; $35.00, paper. Names matter. Playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) has said, "I believe in naming what's right in front of us because that is often what is most invisible."1 The Naïve Idealist, contributor to the web site The Good Men Project, adds, "A person's name is the doorway into their world; a [End Page 505] person's name has the power to open a connection into their world, a connection to show them who you are, a connection to pass your feelings of that person through and a connection to show them how you see them."2 Onlookers apparently feel less connected to victims of genocide, refugees crossing treacherous seas, or migrants packed into detention camps unless and until they learn the names of individual sufferers who come to emblematize larger plights. To the extent the world came to care at all about the humanitarian crisis in Syria, it was because we learned the name of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who was washed ashore on a Turkish beach in 2015.3 People subjugated by colonialism have been generally treated, by both colonial regimes and later historians, as discursive objects and subaltern "ethnotypes" whose individuality is effaced. Noting and recording individual names is one of the most powerful ways in which we can acknowledge their existence, singularity, and historical importance. Unfortunately, colonial archives rarely disclose those names. Therefore, when we find names we must treasure them, not just for the information they can provide for our books and articles, but for the potentially transformative encounters we might have with the bearers of those names. If, as the Naïve Idealist says, "a person's name has the power to open a connection into their world," Kirsten L. Ziomek's Lost Histories demonstrates that power. Her dogged pursuit of the names and life stories of people who lived within Japan's formal empire is truly impressive. In several cases Ziomek circumvents the limitations of the "colonial archive" to provide us with portrayals of people whose lives were certainly affected by the "oppressive nature of Japan's colonial policies" (pp. 8–10) but were nevertheless full and fascinating. Her investigations do not always yield "uplifting stories of power and agency," yet they do reveal some of the ways that "colonial subjects acted within that oppression" (p. 11). Several times throughout the text, Ziomek recounts her sleuthing process, sharing with the reader the excitement of discovery. The author sometimes overstates the originality of her insights and themes. For a couple of decades now, historians of Japanese imperialism have been crafting more "complicated" (p. 6) and "nuanced" (p. 11) depictions of colonial relationships; they have recognized the "precariousness of Japanese rule" (p. 6) and that there was no simple "one-way process in which [End Page 506] the Japanese always controlled their subjects" (p. 5); they have worked in multiple languages to understand the thoughts and experiences of colonial subjects and to create accounts that de-center (while not understating) the fact of Japanese domination. Ziomek is hardly the first to tell us that colonial identities were protean, or that Koreans, aboriginal and Han Taiwanese, Ainu, Okinawans, and Micronesians navigated imperial relations cleverly and turned the material and nonmaterial conditions of colonial modernity to their own personal and collective advantages. We know that Japanese officials relied extensively on connections and alliances with compliant local elites, whose own interests and motivations were complex and malleable, and who did not hesitate to invoke their status as "children of the emperor" to assert their own dignity. Historians of Japan are aware that there were multiple conflicting imperial theories, justifications, and visions, and that in certain contexts "ethnoracial difference" was celebrated as an asset rather than an indication of the failure and futility of assimilation (dōka) and imperialization (kōminka) policies (pp. 5–7). Ziomek is thus contributing to what have become mainstream trends...

Epistolary Enunciation in Quebec and Indigenous Cinemas: The Letter as Identity Vector and Memory Tool

This article focuses on the use of the letter in Canadian cinema, and more particularly in Quebec films featuring plural identities that further complexify this province’s relationship with its identity and those of others. This article explores how the letter becomes a means for Quebec migrants to communicate with their family history and with their host community. It also shows how the letter is a mediator and a symbol uniting minority cultures in search of roots, for filmmakers who stage immigrants or mixed-race protagonists. Finally, I explore how the letter serves the Indigenous peoples of Canada, victims of cultural genocide, by participating in decolonization through the re-establishment of family and community ties. In doing so, the article provides a general picture of the use of the letter as an object of memory and reconciliation in contemporary Quebec and Indigenous cinemas.

Remembering genocide in the diaspora: Place and materiality in the commemoration of atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka

ABSTRACTThe pain of war and genocide is often very physical and place-based. At the same time, displacement compels many of those who lost their loved ones to remember them and their homeland’s violent past from afar. This article explores the territoriality and materiality of diaspora remembrance by looking at diaspora initiatives to remember victims of genocide and war in Rwanda and Sri Lanka. In Brussels, a memory conflict between supporters and critics of the Rwandan government is played out around a small monument. In rural United Kingdom, an envisioned memorial park to Tamils martyred in the struggle for independence illustrates how memorial spaces in the diaspora challenge official homeland state narratives of the past and carry meaning as a symbolic land for Tamils. Initiatives to plant trees, name streets and throw flowers on a river provide additional examples of how diaspora actors strive to anchor memory of atrocities physically and territorially. The article suggests that materiality and spatiality of memorialization takes on different meanings in a diasporic context, as initially ‘meaningless’ places are turned into self-referential sites for remembrance, and the establishment of more permanent memorial structures can form part of home-making processes in the country of settlement.

Cartographies of Genocide

Cartographies of Genocide

A Remarkable “Emotional Community” of Rescuers in Occupied Warsaw: The Cases of Zofia Kossak and Jarosław and Anna Iwaszkiewicz

ABSTRACTJarosław and Anna Iwaszkiewicz and Zofia Kossak were posthumously awarded the Medal of the Righteous among the Nations for rescuing Jews. The former hid Jews on their estate of Stawisko near Warsaw, whereas the latter was the founder of Żegota, The Polish Council to Aid Jews. Their responses to the Jewish plight, however, emerged from divergent pre-war ideological identifications. The Iwaszkiewiczes’ affiliation with Skamander, a pre-war avant-garde group of Polish and Polish-Jewish poets, affirmed their secular vision the equality and the “brotherhood of men.” The reality of war effected a powerful sense of responsibility towards the Jewish fugitives despite the general Polish acquiescence with the destruction of the Jews. Whereas the Iwaszkiewiczes remained faithful to the ideals of the Enlightenment, Kossak, a pre-war Catholic nationalistic-antisemitic writer, recognized the need to transform her attitude towards the Jews. While she never retracted her anti-Jewish sentiments, Kossak perceived the destruction of Jews as an abominable transgression of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Dismayed by the widespread Polish participation in the Jewish extermination, Kossak demanded that the patristic doctrine of contempt for the Jews be suspended and that the concept of “love your neighbour as yourself” be extended to the Jewish people. The juxtaposition of the cases of the Iwaszkiewiczes and Kossak sheds light on the emotional and ideological complexity of the ethical value system that compels an altruistic attitude towards the victims of terror. The Iwaszkiewiczes’ and Kossak’s consciously chosen position as social outliers highlights the importance of microhistory in the investigation of witnesses’ responses to victims of genocide.

Law, Literature and Genocide: Rupert Bazambanza’s Smile Through the Tears

Abstract Proceeding from the view that international criminal law remains a neglected area of study within law-and-literature scholarship, this article undertakes a critical reading of Rupert Bazambanza’s 2004 graphic novel Smile Through the Tears, set during the Rwandan genocide. It argues that Bazambanza’s text not only provides a powerful rendering of the subjective experience of the victims of genocide, but also reveals to the reader a number of the conditioning factors that catalysed the violence. Reading the novel alongside case law and academic literature, the article ventures an analysis of how, by exposing such factors, the text might also aid in furthering awareness and understanding of core issues relating to the legal framework of genocide.

The Myth of ‘Bengali Migration’ to Arakan Debunked

Genocidal crimes don’t happen in vacuum and require groundwork from the racist and bigoted elements to state and non-state actors to prepare the support base and mobilize the dominant group to perpetrate such heinous crimes. For decades, the Buddhist majority in Myanmar has denied the very existence of the minority Rohingya people who are mostly Muslims and falsely portrayed them as intruders from the district of Chittagong of Bangladesh. As a result, the Rohingyas are victims of genocide. Since 2017 nearly 24,000 of them have been slaughtered, as part of a national project, in Buddhist Myanmar simply because of their distinct ethnicity and religion. Nearly a million of them have been forced to seek refuge inside Bangladesh. In this paper, the British-era demographic data on the Rohingya people who are mostly settled in their ancestral land of Arakan (Rakhine), bordering today’s Bangladesh are analyzed statistically. The results of the analysis debunk the popular Buddhist myth of Bengali or Chittagonian mass migration from Chittagong in East Bengal (today’s Bangladesh) to Arakan during the British rule of India.

The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are Victim of Genocide!

This article deals with the genocide against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. For decades, the Rohingya in Myanmar has been the victim of the extensive violation of human rights. Recently the Rohingya, Karen, San, Chin, and other ethnic groups are facing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Of them, the Rohingya is the mostly dehumanized and persecuted ethnic minority group. The Rohingya is stateless and exile in its own country. The Government of Myanmar (GoM) has taken attempts for establishing one nation, one language, and one religious policy in the country. Since 2012 the persecution upon the Rohingya in Myanmar falls in the genocide. In 1917, the Rohingya faced the final stages of genocide. Genocide is considered as one of the worst moral crimes a Government can commit against its citizens. An attempt has been taken here to discuss the aspects of genocide, and genocide upon the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. 
 
 
 

Formation, Development and Current State of the Armenian Genocide Victims Remembrance Day (Part 2)

On April 24, 1965, Armenians both in the Soviet Armenia and Diaspora commemorated the 50th anniversary of Mets Yeghern. In the Soviet Armenia this became possible not only due to the changes within the wide circles of the society after the Khrushchev Thaw but also because of the political will of the Armenian authorities, namely, Yakov Zarobyan, the First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party. The decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was preceded by a long sequence of preparatory work, among which was a letter addressed to the authorities of Moscow in December 1964. Thanks to some ideological statements there, the Armenian Genocide has been moved from the level of a solely Armenian tragedy to the level of the world history. The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Mets Yeghern took place on two levels: people and state/party. The mass demonstration, peoples’ march, the distribution of leaflets and intrusion to the Opera building were the sure indicators of a national outbreak. Thanks to a position of the Armenian authorities no mass persecution against the participants was followed. The commemoration of April 24, 1965 in Yerevan broke the wall of official silence and revealed the truth about one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century to the wide public. It gave rise to scholarly researches, publication of books and archival records relating to the events of 1915 and resulted in the inclusion of the 1915 Genocide into the textbooks. Finally, it was a unique case when the authorities and people were fighting for the same cause even though from the opposite ends. They fought and reached their goal. One of the evidences of this fight was the construction of the Memorial during 2,5 years, which immediately took its place among the symbols of the Armenian identity. It has been 50 years since that people are organizing annual April 24th marches to the Memorial. On April 24-25, 1965 in different parts of Diaspora Remembrance Day of the Victims of Mets Yeghern was solemnly commemorated. It can be stated, that the solemn commemoration of April 24, 1965 in different communities of the Armenian Diaspora displayed the qualitative transition from the culture of mourning to another level of commemoration ceremonies. Particularly, the idea that the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide are finally getting/should get their worthy punishment/assessment was present. On the eve of April 24, many memorials are being built in different corners of the world. On April 24, 1975, for the first time the authorities of the Soviet Armenia officially paid tribute to the memory of Mets Yeghern victims by visiting the Genocide Memorial. At 7pm a Moment of Silence in the memory of the Genocide victims was announced on the television and radio. On November 22, 1988, the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR adopted the law on the “Condemnation of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Turkey” and recognized April 24 the “Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide.” During the Karabakh Movement or the Armenian Revolution (February 20, 1988 – August 23, 1990) the change in the essence of the Remembrance Day has occurred: it became the day of presenting political demands on different issues of social life. The article details the commemoration of the Remembrance Day of the Genocide victims in the context of the commemorative rituals of the Armenian people. In 1965, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Mets Yeghern, the memory of Genocide attained a new status. It can be stated that it became a pan-national “property,” a feature for the whole Armenians. The Genocide memory became a constituent part of the Armenian identity and through the efforts of Hay Dat and other similar organizations became known to the world. On the centennial of the Armenian Genocide not the memory of Mets Yeghern but the memory of Armenian Genocide still remains as one of the most important manifestations of the Armenian identity. This memory is one of the unique elements which unite different political forces and started influencing not only the preservation but also the formation of a nation. Executive and legislative bodies of more than twenty-five countries as well as various international organizations have now recognized the Armenian Genocide. The vast majority of recognitions as a rule happen on or around April 24. More than hundred years have passed since the Armenian Genocide. It is high time to reconsider the concealed meaning of the Remembrance Day, transform it, and at least change its emphasis by putting another wording for April 24 into circulation: “Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide and the Heroes of the Selfdefense Battles.”

Stradanje Bošnjaka u proteklom ratu na području Sućeske u općini Srebrenica

Sućeska is a physio-geographical and anthropogeographical area in the northwestern part of the Srebrenica municipality. In the narrow sense, this area is bordered by Zeleni Jadar river canyon in the south and the valley of the Bukovica river in the north. In a broader sense, the area of Sućeska includes the area between the upper basin of the Potočari River, in the north, and plateau of Podravnje, in the south. The western border is the valley of the river Zeleni Jadar, and in the east it is the area of springs of the Kazani river and Kutlicka river. These boundaries of the Sućeska region should be taken on a conditional basis, because in the defining boundaries of an area should also be consider the anthropogeographical features of the area, such as the historical development of the area, ethno-geographical and cultural-geographical features, then the sense of mutual affiliation to some geographical area, etc. In the Middle Ages, area of Sućeska belonged to the Trebotići parish, with a much larger area, which included a large part of the upper and middle river flow of the river Zeleni Jadar.Taking into account cultural, ethnographic and historical facts, the geographic area of Sućeska includes the following inhabited places: Bostahovine, Brakovci, Bučinovići, Bučje, Kutuzero, Lipovac, Opetci, Podgaj, Podosoje, Slatina, Staroglavice, Sućeska i Žedanjsko. The area of Sućeska is approximately 64.3 square kilometers and covers the territory of thirteen populated places in the northwestern part of the municipality of Srebrenica. According to the population census of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991, there were 638 households in the area of Sućeska, with an average size of 5.1 members, and a total population of 3,291 members, mostly Bosniaks ethnicity. According to the latest census of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina conducted in 2013, 1,475 people (757 women) lived in Sucesska, of which 1,461 Bosniak people (751 women). The paper presents the most important demographic consequences of war suffering of Bosniaks, in the area of Sućeska, in the municipality of Srebrenica, particulary during the genocide in so called "UN Safe Area of Srebrenica" , in July 1995. During the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, 118 Bosniak were killed, including 33 of the female, of the average age of 38.1 years. The average age of killed men was 36.4 years. Number of the widows whose husbands were killed is 50, with 111 children orphans, with an average age of 10.6 years. During the genocide, 619 people were killed, including 9 women, with the average age of 60.1 years. The average age of killed men, the victims of genocide, was 35.6 years. Number of the widows whose husbands were killed is 383, with 624 children orphans, with an average age of 7.9 years. Until today, there are less than 500 Bosniaks living in the area of Sućeska, and more than 600 people whose living outside Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly in the United States of America.

On the Harm of Genocide

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict

Did the 1915 genocide of the Ottoman Armenians play a role in the genesis of the Karabakh war? In the early phase of the conflict, many Armenian activists and politicians drew parallels between the evolving struggles of the present and the traumatic events of 1915. This essay explores the ways in which Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey have referred to the events of 1915 to formulate their policies towards the conflict. The essay argues that the largely suppressed past trauma was present in the mass psychology of the conflicting parties, although in radically different ways, and that it shaped developing events. After depoliticising genocide commemorations in the early years of its independence, Armenia has recently witnessed an increase in references to the genocide in political discourse. The same also applies, somewhat paradoxically, to Azerbaijan, which has developed its own state-sponsored discourse of genocide, vehemently denying that the genocide took place while portraying Azerbaijan as a victim of genocide itself. This exchange of roles clearly needs further explanation.