The institute comprising American and other genocide scholars strongly condemned Pashinian’s written address to the nation which was markedly different from his previous April 24 statements.
Pashinian no longer called for wider international recognition of the genocide and said instead that Armenians should “overcome the trauma” generated by the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Armenians “became victims of geopolitical intrigues and false promises,” he said, avoiding any condemnation of the regime of the so-called Young Turks that ruled the crumbling empire during the First World War.
In a lengthy statement posted on its website at the weekend, the Lemkin Institute suggested that Pashinian engaged in “victim blaming” and echoed “the official position of Turkey regarding the Armenian Genocide.”
“By parroting the Turkish narrative of the events of 1915-1923, the Armenian Prime Minister risks absolving Turkey of its responsibility for the Armenian Genocide, downplaying all previous acknowledgment efforts,” it said. “Further, it may substantially hamper the continuing work on international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and Turkish accountability - something that the worldwide Armenian diaspora, as well as genocide scholars and activists, have been fighting for.
“Pashinian’s words directly echo the official Turkish view of the Armenian people as rebellious ‘traitors’ who collaborated with hostile European powers to bring about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and who therefore betrayed the country. In fact, … Pashinian seems to be making the case that Armenians can only avoid future genocides by capitulating to present-day Turkey’s expansionist designs.”
“While the Lemkin Institute understands that the Prime Minister is under immense pressure from his neighbors, as well as foreign powers, to mollify and perhaps capitulate to the demands of Armenia’s hostile and threatening neighbors, we also know that efforts to appease genocidal states are almost always in vain,” added the think-tank named after Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide.”
Arusyak Julhakian, a lawmaker representing Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, rejected the strong criticism and accused the Lemkin Institute of “blatant interference in Armenia’s internal affairs.”
“Armenia’s prime minister or any official have not uttered even a single letter questioning the genocide,” Julhakian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service
Pashinian’s latest April 24 statement was also condemned by his political opponents and other domestic critics. They have long accused him of being willing to give ground on the genocide issue to please Turkey.
Earlier in April, another senior Civil Contract lawmaker, Andranik Kocharian, called for “verifying” the number of the genocide victims and ascertaining the circumstances of their deaths. He said Pashinian wants to “make the entire list of compatriots subjected to genocide more objective.”
Faced with an uproar from Armenian opposition leaders, civil society figures and genocide scholars, Kocharian claimed the following day that he expressed his personal opinion, rather than the Pashinian government’s position. The opposition dismissed the claim.
