Today and throughout this week, we remember the cruelty inflicted by the Ottoman Turkish government on the Armenian people, bringing them to the brink of extinction. 34 countries and dozens of regional governments have now formally recognised the Genocide, bringing them in line with academic consensus. But as we continue to pass these milestones, we should stop and remind ourselves and others as to why these commemorations remain relevant, 110 years on.

We remember because the reality of Armenian life today, in 2025, is moulded by the Genocide. Most of the world’s Armenian population live continents away from their ancestral homeland. They speak a language which is no longer heard in the place that language was born. Millions of Armenians live with the understanding that they bear a special responsibility to keep their culture and history alive.

We remember because there are those who continue to deny the atrocity, hide evidence, seek to silence us, or discredit our dead. Against that we stand guard over their memory, preventing their stories and the evil of their murderers from being lost in a busy, noisy world.

We remember because those same atrocities continue to be inflicted against our people. Today we bear witness to barbarities committed by Azerbaijan against Armenians, most significantly in the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh in 2023. However, our memory is the lynchpin of our unity, and together, we will keep the flames of memory burning as an expression of defiance, both for the victims of 1915 and 2023.

Lastly, our remembrance of the Genocide – much like our remembrance of the Holocaust – serves as a warning to the world of the barbarity man is still capable of. The world is becoming a colder, more unstable place. Misinformation has become a formidable weapon. As conflicts rage, world leaders are acting with a greater sense of impunity. These conditions mirror those of 1915 when, in the shadow of war, so many Armenian lives were taken.

Now more than ever, to avoid revisiting these dark chapters of human history, we must champion truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The truth of the Armenian Genocide, no matter how politics seeks to distort it, is beyond question, and we Armenians will continue to express that truth as one. We will not forget our history, we will not be gaslit, and we will not be silenced. We will always champion truth, and we ask all of you here today to join us in this endeavour.

Finally, we ask those here who hold the honour of sitting in Parliament or otherwise have the ears of decision makers to push His Majesty’s government to recognise the Armenian Genocide, secure justice for people of Artsakh, and facilitate a genuine, dignified peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan – based on the truth of that region and its history. Thank you all again for coming. I now invite the guests to step forward, for the laying of the wreaths.”

Last year I joined a delegation of British politicians in Kyiv to show solidarity with the brave Ukrainian people and see for myself the extent of the Russian onslaught. During the trip I met the Children’s Rights Ombudsman who briefed us on the 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by the Russians since the start of the recent conflict in 2022. And they are just the ones they know about.

Thousands of children have been separated from their Ukrainian families or carers, taken to Russian territory and in many cases adopted and had their names and entire heritage changed. Amidst all the atrocities being committed by the Russians this is one of the least known about but surely the most sinister. Under the terms of Article 2 of the Genocide Convention it also amounts to genocide on the basis of ‘Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’

Yet this is just one example of genocide that is going on in the world where we live now, in a country constantly in the news headlines, not some distant and little-known corner of the world in a past century. The charge of genocide, and at the very least war crimes, has been bandied around often in the context of Gaza and Israel. Further east in China, hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uyghurs remain in what we would recognise as concentration camps, treated as forced labour and with women forcibly sterilised. In 2021 the high-profile Uyghur Tribunals in London established a case for genocide in Xinjiang at the hands of the Chinese government. And of course the methods used by Azerbaijan brutally to displace the Christian Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, and erase all trace of them, added and abetted by Turkey and Russia, with apparent impunity from the international community, were at the very least ethnic cleansing, of which President Aliyev openly boasted. There are many other examples.

The Armenian Genocide was the first major genocide of the 20th century and arguably the original basis for the term which was not actually coined before the Holocaust. No one has an excuse for not recognising the Holocaust, we teach it in schools. Increasingly, across faith communities we now commemorate and remember the genocide of Muslims at Srebrenica during the Balkan Wars in 1995. We make films about the Rwanda genocide, and it features in considerations about contemporary UK immigration policy.

Yet few in the UK appreciate the significance of the Armenian genocide or even know that it happened let alone where. Despite being in some remote corner of Europe now more than a century ago it was one of the most significant atrocities marking the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. The systematic mass murder of between 1-1.5 million ethnic Armenians, many sent on death marches into the Syrian desert, and with many of the surviving women and children forced to convert to Islam and integrate into Muslim households.

We knew about these atrocities at the time and the British Parliament played a key role in uncovering and revealing them to the world. The British Government commissioned a Parliamentary Blue Book in 1916 to document the events of the Armenian Genocide compiled by the politician and jurist Viscount Bryce and the eminent historian Arnold J Toynbee. Its horrors were debated in Parliament including a particularly graphic contribution from the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, who described:

‘Appalling stories of wholesale massacre, of expulsion of great populations from their homes under conditions which could only be described as in most cases slowly dragged-out massacre….on a scale so vast as is scarcely credible in our own time, or indeed, in any time.’

It would be more than 30 years before the international community enacted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which now has 153 state parties and was ratified by the UK in 1970. Separately no fewer than 31 countries including the US and France together with the Pope and the European Parliament have now officially recognised the Armenian Genocide. Despite its proud reputation and longstanding involvement in exposing and prosecuting international atrocities, and championing the international rule of law, incredibly the UK is still not one of those 31 countries, and shows little sign of becoming one anytime soon.

It was because of that omission that I introduced the ‘Recognition of Armenian Genocide’ Bill into Parliament whilst still an MP and Chairman of the Armenia All Party Parliamenatry Group back in 2021. Alas the Bill never progressed further and I made myself particularly unpopular with the Turkish Ambassador. However, the legislation is still there, ‘oven-ready’ as Boris would term it, and can be picked up by this or future British governments at any time.

The case I made back in 2021 was that we cannot legitimately call out and stand up to those powers committing genocide in the 21st century whilst sidelining and neglecting some of the worst examples on the 20th of which the Armenian Genocide was indisputably one of the most egregious. Failing to recognise the Armenian Genocide risks conveying a dangerous message of impunity, that a crime unchallenged is a crime tacitly encouraged or downplayed. It may not initially play well with the Turkish Government but an acknowledgement that the atrocity happened, and a form of ‘truth and reconciliation’ exercise to put right the injustices of the past would ultimately enhance the standing and credibility of Turkish administrations going forward.

My Bill would have obliged the UK formally to recognise the Armenian Genocide and come into line with our 31 allies who have already done so; establish an annual commemoration to victims; and acknowledge the facts and relevance of the event in our educational curricula as we already do with other historical genocides.

Given the turbulent times in which we live, and where genocide is much more widely understood and alas practiced, it seems illogical that the UK would not want to address this historical injustice as a matter of urgency. Given the important role we continue to play in promoting the importance and observance of the international rule of law, in a world where powerful regimes increasingly fail to, this simple act by the UK Government would send out a strong message that is needed now more than ever. It was wrong over 100 years ago, and it is wrong now, and we all have an obligation to call it out and prevent it, and the whole of humanity is weaker if it fails to do so.

Tim Loughton

Former member of parliament for East Worthing & Shoreham 1997-2024

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