General prohibition demanded of demonstrations for the glorification of crimes against humanity

Following the prohibition of two Turkish demonstrations in Berlin in connection with the genocide of the Armenians and Assyrian-Aramaic Christians from 1915 to 1918 in Turkey the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) called on Wednesday for a general prohibition of demonstrations for the glorification of present or past crimes against humanity - like genocide and expulsion. "It should not be possible to call on the general public in Germany to deny genocide or indeed to approve of it and to honour war criminals for their monstrous acts" said the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. Yet this was precisely the aim of the two demonstrations in Berlin which were finally forbidden. The organisers want to demand that Turkey be no longer charged with the genocide of the Armenians. In addition to this they are calling for a wreath to be placed for one of the men chiefly responsible for this genocide, the Turkish-Osman politician, Talat Pasha, who was killed by a survivor in 1921 in Berlin. During the First World War nearly 1.5 million Armenians fell victim to genocide in Turkey. The Christians died as a result of massacres, hunger and epidemics. They were drowned or burned alive in houses, churches and caves. With them some 500,000 Assyrian-Aramaic Christians were murdered. In addition tens of thousands of Pontos-Greeks wee victims of genocide and deportation. With the dreadful fate of those murdered in mind the American Jewish lawyer Rafael Lemkin proposed to the League of Nations an international convention against genocide in 1934, referring to the genocide against the Armenians. It was not until 1948 that this proposal was adopted by the setting up of a UN convention to prevent and punish genocide.