The letter “Millions Were Lost in Armenian Genocide” contains historical inaccuracies.

Statements that “Armenian genocide is a proven fact” are false. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stated it”doubted that there could be a general consensus as to events such as those at issue, given that historical research was by definition open to discussion and a matter of debate, without necessarily giving rise to final conclusions or to the assertion of objective and absolute truths” (Perincek vs. Switzerland). Demonizing the rejection of the notion of “Armenian genocide” while the debates in academia still go on, resembles demonizing the admirers/opponents of Charles Darwin for their disbelief/belief in God. Neither group represents the entirety of humankind or possess a monopoly on truth.

The ECHR found it inadmissible to draw any comparison between the Holocaust and the Armenian narratives, since the latter lacks “clear legal basis” and does not constitute an act “that had been found by an international court to be clearly established.”

Dismissal of the notion of “genocide” does not imply the denial of the well-established fact of Armenian massacres. The Californian lawmakers should have instructed the education department to emphasize that as a result of inter-communal civil war during WWI, both Armenians and Muslims suffered terrible human tragedies, but due to the absence of legal basis and international court’s decision, neither side can claim the deaths among its members to be “more genocidal” than the other’s.

Attribution of the infamous statement to Adolf Hitler is a proven forgery. The Nuremberg Tribunal refused to accept the suspicious document as evidence. Even if Raphael Lemkin’s notion of “genocide” (1943) were retroactively applied to the events of decades earlier, then the complete annihilation of Herero and Namakwa peoples in 1904-07 would have been considered the first genocide of the century. Finally, Armenia is not the first Christian nation, as the letter alleges. More than a century before King Tiridat III had adopted Christianity in the Parthian province of Armenia in 301, Edessa (Osroene) was the first state to adopt Christianity in 198 AD.

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