{"id":602,"date":"2019-10-03T00:40:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T00:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armeniangenocidereparations.info\/?p=602"},"modified":"2020-04-26T01:06:17","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T01:06:17","slug":"reparations-expert-calls-for-passage-armenian-genocide-resolution-in-capitol-hill-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armeniangenocidereparations.info\/?p=602","title":{"rendered":"Reparations Expert Calls for Passage Armenian Genocide Resolution in Capitol Hill Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

“TO RECOGNIZE THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IS TO SEEK AFTER REPARATIONS; AND TO SEEK AFTER REPARATIONS IS, ULTIMATELY, TO SEEK AFTER JUSTICE.” – DR. JERMAINE MCCALPIN<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WASHINGTON, DC \u2013 Genocide reparations expert Dr. Jermaine McCalpin stressed that Congressional passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolutions (S.Res.150 and H.Res.296) represents a key to countering the denial of this crime, seeking reparations and securing justice during the second installment of the Armenian National Committee of America\u2019s (ANCA) Raphael Lemkin Policy Series.
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\u201cI am honored to have had the opportunity to host the second lecture of the Raphael Lemkin Policy Series,\u201d said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. \u201cDr. McCalpin led an excellent discussion on the recognition and remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. We must pass H.Res.296 to ensure it is the policy of the United States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. McCalpin, the co-author of the landmark Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group Report \u201cResolution with Justice,\u201d outlined five reasons why the U.S. Congress should pass pending Armenian Genocide legislation:<\/p>\n

1) It will send a message that the U.S. will honor its commitments to historical rectification, noting that passage is \u201censuring that this type of recognition leads to decisive action.\u201d
\n2) It will remove the veil of diplomatic protection of denial by Turkey of the Genocide.
\n3) It indicates U.S. global leadership in human rights demands and that initiates strategic actions and legislation
\n4) Sends a clear message that contemporary imperatives should not over-ride the continuation of the Genocide
\n5) History will judge us as having failed our antecedents by allowing them to be forgotten by virtue of not supporting Genocide recognition and by extension, reparations.<\/p>\n

Dr. McCalpin made a powerful case for genocide reparations as a way to ensure that \u201cthe cloak of denial is removed. Once reparations are granted, there is no hiding behind the invention of history and selective recall by the Turkish state. Reparations take power away from perpetrators and deniers and give these powers to the victims, survivors, and descendants.\u201d McCalpin also explained that reparations would help re-mediate victim identity and help \u201cre-humanize\u201d those who died and those who live on. Finally, reparations also establish compensation, which, McCalpin and the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group envisioned as a \u201ccomprehensive package of repair [\u2026] focused on the return of confiscated and sequestered land, property, and possessions taken from the Armenians in the committal of Genocide.\u201d Overall, argued McCalpin, \u201creparations provide the opportunity to honestly engage the past, making peace with the past, because it serves as a mechanism of atonement for the \u2018sin of genocide.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In his remarks, McCalpin framed reparations in the larger question of transitional justice-seeking an answer to the question, \u201chow do we deal with the past.\u201d McCalpin explained \u201cTurkey has not asked or answered that question\u2026 Instead, the past has been sanitized and, as Umit Ungor says, \u2018they have organized oblivion \u2013 they have taken Armenia out of history altogether.\u2019\u201d McCalpin argued that \u201cTurkey is not ultimately a truly democratic society, one, because it has not reckoned with its past, and two because it is a polity enamored by repression and intimidation. When we talk about democratization, we can\u2019t expect to remove the blight of the Armenian Genocide. We can\u2019t get to justice and democratization without addressing this vexing problem. Turkey cannot proclaim democracy while denying its historical obligations to provide reparations.\u201d<\/p>\n