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Sergei Mironov’s report at international forum "Genocide in Historical Memory of Nations and in Information Wars of Modern Age" 28 октября 2014 Sergei Mironov, Chairman of Party A JUST RUSSIA and the Leader of the State Duma party faction made a report at international forum "Genocide in historical memory of nations and in information wars of modern age" held in Moscow on November 28. Dear forum participants, Today we gathered her to discuss a very complicated and painful problem. It touches upon a huge variety of historical, political, legal and moral issues that (in many respects) have not been solved yet. Their discussion must be particularly reasonable and competent. The XX-th Century has come down in history not only because of its scientific discoveries and space flights but with dozens of millions of people whose lives were cut off by the toughest tragedies of the century. Genocide of nations is such a gloomy page of the previous century. The extermination of Armenians, Assyrians and Pontiac Greeks in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was the first case of genocide. It was carried out by mass physical destruction and deportation that were sure to result in imminent deaths. It is necessary to state that the government of Young Turks was the first who began to use the method of rapid mass destruction of the whole nation; later in Germany, Nazi criminals added this method to their armoury. The world shuddered with the Holocaust’s horrors in the middle of the century. Never has human history ever witnessed mass murders committed in such a scale! Genocide and the Holocaust directly touched upon the destiny of several generations and ruined it. The XXth Century ended in mass destruction of the Tutsi people in Ruanda in 1944. As you know, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, coined the term "GENOCIDE" in 1943. After World War II in December 1948, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted. "Genocide" was defined as the worst crime against humanity. Article 3 of the Convention says that not only Genocide but also direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide shall be punishable. Having passed through the tragic upheavals of two world wars, having condemned all forms of genocide at the international level and having developed the political and legal instruments for prevention of crimes against humanity, modern civilization seemed to prevent once and forever any expressions of genocide in the XXIst century. But at present, we are anxious to observe Nazi movements and parties lifting their heads worldwide, growth of the level of social aggression, and national and religious hatred. Once again, we feel that modern civilization with all its fantastic achievements and breathtaking scientific discoveries is endangered. High technologies made the world more comfortable but not safer! They turned out not to guarantee people against becoming wild, including those who seized the power. A terrorist with an iPhone is modern reality. Observing what is going on in the world, we realize how thin is the layer of culture and civilization we inherited. There are bloody events in Iraq and Syria, staged executions of people in the live television broadcasts, thousands of desperate refugees are crying for help. All this makes us realize that peaceful life is an enormous value that is worth struggling for. Now a wave of violence and hatred is already at the threshold of our home. Many of us had the postwar childhood. Even in nightmares we could not imagine that one day shells will break once again and children will die on the former battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. To our deep regret, adherents of the Nazi ideology, direct accomplices of war criminals and those who proclaimed themselves to be successors to the ideology of collaborationists feel free in Ukraine at present. Their evil hand is recognizable in the arson of the Trade Union building in Odessa, actions of participants of punitive operations in the south-east of Ukraine, destruction of residential districts and executions of civilians. We believed that a strong violence immunity widely supported by the world community already formed after the horrors of World War II but it turned out to be overthrown. First of all, our younger generation has again become a victim of the so-called "political immunodeficiency". All of us saw the shots of young people filling the bottles with flame liquids and throwing them in the windows of the Trade Union building. I’d like to say that those shots flew around the world but to my regret, I can’t say so. There is a real censorship in many countries, and rather often civil society fails to see an objective picture of what is going on there. At the same time, we have never equaled the chasteners and the people of Ukraine no matter how much someone would like to cause trouble between our nations and build a new "Berlin Wall" in people’s minds and in reality. It is quite obvious for me that the civil war in Ukraine is accompanied by the clear-cut elements of genocide that require a careful investigation and punishment of the guilty. These events come in full within the provisions of the UN Convention on Genocide. I’d like to remind you that crimes of war, including the facts of genocide do not have periods of prescription. That is why we want to reflect on the tragic events of the past and present, and bring them into confrontment, find grounds to improve the international legal rules and regulations. Dear colleagues, Russia will stand against appearance of nationalist regimes in the world and reanimation of fascism with all means available. At present when geopolitical tension is growing, the topics of violence and genocide (as its extreme form) have acquired a special importance. We must counter the attempts to erase the facts of genocide in the memories of nations and prevent repetition of such tragedies in history!
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