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French Senate Recognizes Assyrian Genocide
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(AINA) -- The Senate of France passed a resolution on Monday recognizing the Turkish genocide of Assyrians in World War 1, which killed 750,000 Assyrians (75%), as well as one million Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians. The vote was 300 in favor and 2 against. Turkey condemned the resolution, calling it "null and void."

Related: The Assyrian Genocide

The resolution reads as follows:

The National Assembly,

Having regard to article 34-1 of the Constitution,

Having regard to article 136 of the Regulations of the National Assembly,

Considering the Charter of the United Nations of June 26, 1945,

Having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of December 10, 1948,

Having regard to the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide of December 9, 1948, in particular its article II,

Having regard to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of November 4, 1950,

Having regard to the 2007 resolution of the International Association of Genocide Specialists recognizing as genocide the Ottoman campaign against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks of Anatolia between 1914 and 1923,

Having regard to Law No. 2001-70 of January 29, 2001 relating to the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915,

Having regard to Decree No. 2019-291 of April 10, 2019 relating to the annual commemoration of the Armenian genocide of 1915,

Considering that the historical, linguistic, cultural and religious specificities of the Assyro-Chaldeans make them a people with their own identity, distinct from that of other peoples of the Near and Middle East;

Considering that, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Assyro-Chaldean population living in the Ottoman Empire amounted to more than 500,000 people;

Considering that, before the First World War, the Assyro-Chaldean people were victims of serious and recurrent persecution and of several massacres, notably those of 1895-1896;

Considering that, between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman regime organized the mass murder of the Assyro-Chaldean population, their exodus from the borders of the empire and their forced conversion to Islam;

Considering that the combined and concerted extermination of more than 250,000 Assyro-Chaldeans, more than half of the population at the time, had as its goals the negation of Assyrian identity and its disappearance from Ottoman space, regarding the massive and systematic executions, the spoliation of their lands and their property as well as the systematic destruction of their cultural expression property;

Considering that, under the aforementioned United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, are considered crimes of genocide: a national, ethnic, racial and religious group: the murder of members of the group, the serious harm to the physical or mental integrity of members of the group, the intentional subjection of the group to conditions of existence intended to bring about its total physical destruction or partial, measures aimed at hindering births within the group, the forced transfer of children from the group to another group;

Considering that France recognized the Armenian genocide in 2001 and that, since 2019, an annual commemoration day has been officially dedicated to it on April 24;

Considering that the recognition of genocides perpetrated throughout history must make it possible to avoid the repetition of similar crimes in the future;

Considering that the recognition of the atrocities and suffering suffered by the Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire and by the Assyro-Chaldeo-Syriac populations contributes, today as yesterday, to the fight against forgetting, for the establishment of responsibilities and legitimate reparations and against the recurrence of these tragedies;

Considering the importance of the work of memory and respect for the dignity of the human person;

1. Invites the Government to officially recognize as genocidal the mass extermination, deportation and suppression of the cultural heritage of more than 250,000 Assyro-Chaldeans by the Ottoman authorities between 1915 and 1918;

2. Invites the Government to condemn the genocide committed by the Ottoman authorities against the Assyro-Chaldeans between 1915 and 1918;

3. Invites the Government to encourage on the international scene free access to the archives relating to the massacres perpetrated between 1915 and 1918, at the end of the Ottoman period, in order to allow historians to continue their research aimed at establishing and documenting the facts of this period;

4. Encourages the work of memory, particularly in education and culture, in order to raise awareness of the events that occurred during this period of history and the suffering that resulted from them.



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