The "Forgotten Genocide"

The general public and even many historians know very little about the genocide of the Armenians by the government of the Ottoman Empire. Civilian populations have often fallen victim to the brutality of invading armies, bombing raids, lethal substances, and other forms of indiscriminate killings. In the Armenian case, however, the government of the Ottoman Empire, dominated by the so-called Committee of Union and Progress, or Young Turk Party, turned against a segment of its own population. In international law there were certain accepted laws and customs of war that were aimed, in some measure, at protecting civilian population, but these did not cover domestic situations or a government's treatment of its own people. Only after World War II and the Holocaust was that aspect included in the United Nations' Genocide Convention. Nonetheless, at the time of the Armenian deportations and massacres beginning in 1915, many governments and statespersons termed the atrocities as "crimes against humanity".
Except for the Young Turk leaders, no government denied or doubted what was occurring. The govemments of Germany and Austro-Hungary, while allied with the Ottoman Empire, received hundreds of detailed eyewitness accounts from their officials on the spot and privately admitted that the Armenians were being subjected to a policy of annihilation. Newspapers throughout the world, including Australia, carried headlines condemning the atrocities. Between 1915 and 1918, hundreds of declarations, promises, and pledges, were made by world leaders regarding the emancipation, restitution, and rehabilitation of the Armenian survivors. Yet, within a few years those same governments and statespersons turned away from the Armenian Question without having fulfilled any of those pledges. And, after a few years, the Armenian calamity had virtually become "the forgotten genocide".