Ladies and gentlemen,

Mr. Rector of Paris, Chancellor of the Universities, Distinguished Ambassadors, Distinguished professors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Hundred years. There was about a hundred years one of the most appalling episodes in the history of Europe and the world. The political project of the Committee “Union and Progress” to the total extermination of the Armenian people, would be implemented triggering a mass crime, unprecedented in its scope and in nature.

Genocide, the first modern genocide – except for the genocide of the Herero people in 1904, sometimes called “colonial genocide” – was about to be committed.

Today, one hundred years after the genocide, what better symbol that the meeting of researchers, historians of the world put together in the service of understanding, knowledge and recognition of what happened ?

What better answer to the barbarism that these intelligences gathered here to relentlessly go further in the pursuit of scientific truth and advance universal knowledge?

What better symbol finally, the desire to transmit to future generations the memory, this prestigious and solemn place, the Grand Amphitheatre of the oldest universities? That one even which welcomed on 9 April 1916, the meeting in “Homage to Armenia” in the presence of Paul Deschanel, President of the Chamber of Deputies, the writer Anatole France and the Minister of Instruction public at the time, Paul Painlevé?

Paul Painlevé then stood with others to denounce loudly the crime being committed. I quote: “The nightmare has become a present reality. The massacres that last year Armenia bloodshed beyond their scope and the most atrocious cruelty legends of all ages and all countries. »

Today, the echo of those voices still ringing in our ears.

I wish to thank the “International Scientific Council for the study of the Armenian Genocide” and all its partners, including the mission in 2015 of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France and the Regional Council of Ile-de-France, to organizing the biggest event for the 1915 centenary This conference, under the patronage of the President of the Republic, combines high places for French research and knowledge transfer: the Sorbonne, but also the Memorial Shoah, the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences and the National Library of France.

It attests to the investment in research on the genocide of a large community of scientists worldwide. It will, for the first time, allow to question the balance of one hundred years of research on the Armenian genocide, but also to examine, in a comparative dimension, the specificity of the twentieth century in the history of humanity, as the era of genocide and mass violence.

The role of history is crucial because the historian has the primary role of establishing the truth of the facts to shed light on what has been.

Subject to a commitment to systematic extermination, Armenians were first victims of persecution. They were referred to as Armenians because they were Armenians.

Because they represented the soul and the Armenian culture, artists, intellectuals, men and women, were pursued and arrested.

They paid a heavy price.

On 24 April, the musician Komitas was arrested, as well as 650 other intellectuals. The life of the greatest genius of Armenian music, which was rescued from oblivion the most beautiful Armenian folk songs, was broken at that time by the trials of deportation and torture. He fell definitively into madness.

The poet Daniel Varoulan, one of the greatest poets of Armenian literature, was also arrested on April 24 before being brutally murdered 23 August 1915.

Novelist and poet Zabel Yesayan, was, too, targeted by the raid. She miraculously escaped from it. She later worked tirelessly to collect the testimonies of genocide survivors, until overtaken by another barbarism, that of Stalin’s Gulag, where she disappeared in 1943.

The exterminator will continued relentlessly: the entire Armenian people was intended.

The men were killed and their women and children were massacred or deported in appalling conditions. They died on the way, exhaustion, or locked up in camps. Killing in Syria, Mesopotamia, the cradle of European civilization, occurred when other atrocities are committed today.

Research has estimated that, from 1915 to 1917, two-thirds of the Armenians, at least 1.3 million people lost their lives because of the deportations, concentration camps and mass executions.

Research has helped to support and analyze these facts, and name the genocide name. The rigorous study of sources, testimonies of survivors, documents, has established this truth, that no longer debate in the scientific community.

There is no more appropriate term in our language as coined by the jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1943 to name the unnameable, to qualify the will of systematic destruction of a people for what it is.

But if the work of historians is to know, it is also essential because it sustains recognition.

The French Republic has taken note of the progress of historical research and has registered in the single article of the law of 29 January 2001 “France publicly recognizes the Armenian genocide of 1915”.

This is essential because it is the recognition due to the 500 000 French of Armenian origin, descendants of survivors; to all of them, refugees in France, as Missak Manouchian, fought for France and died for her hero.

This recognition is, universally, due recognition to individuals persecuted, oppressed minorities and peoples threatened their existence.

This is also what led France to assert that denial is intolerable because the law is what protects against all forms of manipulation. And this is the position of France to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Armenian diaspora living in free countries have beautifully illustrated how scientific knowledge is an essential weapon for recognition and against Holocaust denial. Just like Archag Tchobanian, arrived in Paris in 1895 in defense of his people rushed into the Hamidian massacres, the Armenian intellectuals have the book and writing a fight for the truth.

In the area of ​​research, we owe much to Armenian historians, whether the great French historians Anahide Ter Minassian, Raymond Kervokian and many others, or American historians such as Vahakn Dadrian and Richard Hovannisian.

In Turkey, the Armenians are working hand in hand with Turkish intellectuals and historians, some of whom have paid with their lives this fight for truth: I think in particular of Hrant Dink, murdered on 19 January 2007. I also want to acknowledge the political scientist Bursa Ersanli and publisher Ragip Zarakolu, and thank them for being here today.

But researchers of Armenian identity n’œuvrent not alone. And Event centenary installs Armenian historians in the heart of the global history of social sciences genocide; it occasionally, and this conference is the event of the passage of the Armenian Genocide to the status of global history object. In France, the opening up of the object of study, Ternon Yves and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, were the precursors, continued with the contribution of the First World War specialists: historians of the Great War ‘now fully include the study and understanding of the extremes of war violence.

The contribution of turcologie was also crucial, experts of the Turkish-Ottoman world who knew uncompromising approach the event.

Finally, in France, the comparative study of genocide has informed the event in light of research on the Holocaust, but also for research, booming, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.

Today is strengthened by the sum of these searches we can collectively remember and honor the victims. Research, the book of creation, are also a calming pain of the memories. These are all bridges between the past and the future.

Yes, the work of historians is finally allowing a nation to look further into the future, and to prevent the killing of reproducing.

The story, as the science of the past of nations, by teaching us where we came from, also allows us to inform our future. Because, thanks to her, we can project ourselves collectively, it helps us build our citizenship.

Because republican citizenship is based on knowledge, understanding, denial of fate, the school has a central role to play in this transmission. It is she who can make real the promise of the Republic his children to grow them in equality and tolerance. It is she who can sow the seeds of a shared memory.

I want to pay tribute to all the history and geography teachers from France who contribute everyday. The genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which is part of our memory to all, is studied by all during the compulsory school in 3rd grade.

At school, we transmit the awakening of citizenship, culture debate of ideas, the struggle against prejudice and against all forms of persecution. We learn the difference between the controversy, dialogue, which is the source of knowledge, and manipulation or falsification.

At school, students must learn to understand the world, but also learn to want to change it, to fully take their place as citizens. This is the meaning of the reforms we adopt, with the introduction next September moral and civic education throughout compulsory education. Also with the reform of the college, which allows students to be more involved in their learning.

But this transmission can not be done only at school, without the support of research.

It must continue in higher education and research, where studies on genocide should be able to better find their way, as “genocide studies” could find their overseas particular.

The magnitude of the issues they cover, they concern numerous scientific disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and beyond. As we enter the second century of research on the Armenian genocide, I would launch a mission study drawing up an inventory of research on genocide to allow it to grow. Confronting perspectives, understand what led to the tragic events of the past, this is what will allow us to prevent the possibility of their repetition in the future. This is what will allow us to continue the fight against oblivion.

This is the sense I think the President of the Republic wished to give this symposium, held under the high patronage.

Meanwhile on April 24, where I will go to Yerevan with President of the Republic for outstanding international commemoration, I like to see in the holding of this major international conference at the Sorbonne sustainable Registration promise this story in the present and in the future: the very definition of history according to Thucydides, who called him “a treasure for eternity. »

Thank you.

Photos of Claire Barbuti

Source: Friday, March 27, 2015,
Claire © armenews.com