!á�� face="Verdana" size="2">The year 2005, allegedly the 90th “anniversary of the genocide,” hardly made a bright start for the Armenians. The inquiry commission created in line with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1564 on the incidents in Darfur presented its report on Jan. 25. In its report the commission points out that contrary to allegations appearing in the media, especially in the Western media, what happened in Darfur was not genocide.

  In Darfur, a 250,000-square-kilometer region in western Sudan, a country with a total area of 2.5 million square kilometers, an insurgency began in 2003. The “African” tribes in the region -- which are exclusively Muslim -- rebelled against the government in an effort to seize control of natural resources that were diminishing due to desertification. The government used, together with the regular army, the armed forces of the “Arab” tribes against the insurgents. As a result of the forced resettlement of civilians and the destruction and burning of villages, agricultural production and animal breeding came to a halt and the famine became more widespread. The two sides perpetrated massacres against one another.

  The commission consisted of five experts appointed by Kofi Annan, and its report received support from a large group from the U.N. Human Rights Secretariat. While explaining in its report why the Darfur incidents did not constitute genocide, the commission pointed out that there would be two basic elements in acts of genocide:

  These two elements are, first, the actus reus consisting of killing, or causing serious bodily or mental harm, or deliberately inflicting life conditions likely to bring about physical destruction; and, second, on the basis of a subjective standard, the existence of a protected group being targeted by the authors of criminal conduct. However, the crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central government authorities are concerned. Generally speaking, the policy of attacking, killing and forcibly displacing members of some tribes does not evince a specific intent to annihilate, in whole or in part, a group distinguished on racial, ethnic, national or religious grounds. Rather, it would seem that those who planned and organized attacks on the villages pursued the intent to drive the victims from their homes, primarily for the purposes of counter-insurgency warfare.

  In other words, forced resettlement of people during times of internal strife may not be aimed at “annihilation” even when that resettlement activity causes numerous deaths. And that aim is a prerequisite of the criminal act of genocide.

  The commission says in its report: “The commission does recognize that in some instances individuals, including government officials, may commit acts with genocidal intent. Whether this was the case in Darfur, however, is a determination that only a competent court can make on a case by case basis.”

  In other words, only competent courts can determine the crime of genocide. Parliaments are not capable in this regard. Therefore the resolutions they adopt and the bills they pass on this issue are devoid of legitimacy.

  Finally, the report says: “The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide.” (p.4) In another part of the report it is stated that the armed insurgent groups engaged in similar violations of the law.

  If the five experts who prepared the Darfur report had looked into the forced resettlement of the Armenians in the Ottoman era, the results they would reach would be hardly any different.

  Yet, a New York-based center (ICTJ) has displayed a self-contradictory attitude on the issue. When the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), of which I was a member, asked the ICTJ whether the “Genocide Convention of 1948 may be applied to incidents that took place at the start of the 20th century,” the ICTJ pointed out in its January 2003 report that the convention cannot be implemented retroactively. However, it also said that the forced resettlement of the Armenians was, according to the aforementioned convention, genocide. That was a contradiction.

  The “great” jurist who prepared that “legal” text was carefully hidden from our sight. We were not given the chance to meet with that person. We could relay our views to the ICTJ officials at only one meeting we could have with them. Unlike the renowned experts who looked into the Darfur incidents, the ICTJ “expert” in question was apparently not familiar with the legal aspects of genocide, that he or she did not know the history of the Armenian incidents at all. That was obvious from the gross mistakes made in the report. Obviously the outcome of the ICTJ report had been determined right from the beginning. The report prepared by that “expert” who thought that he or she was authorized to act as a prosecutor and a judge, has been presented, without any embarrassment, as something that came as the result of “due process.”

  This is why the TARC is now dead.