Armenian Genocide Letter

Dear Ambassador Francis Ricciardone:

Hello my name is Philip Monroe, and I am writing to you in an attempt to show you why Turkey should recognize, and apologize to, the Armenian people for the atrocities that Turkey committed during the years 1915-1923. First of all, I want to show you the definition of "genocide" as formulated by the United Nations during an assembly on December 9, 1948: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

• (1) Killing members of the group;

• (2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

• (3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

• (4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

• (5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Considering points 1-5 from the definition mentioned above, I can easily assure that what happened to the Armenians was actually genocide. The first point says: "killing member of group", it is estimated that 600,000 - 1,800,000 Armenians died during the genocide which happened from 1915 – 1923. For example, on April 1916 a German witness at the Ras-ul-Ain camp reported that "every day for almost a month 300 to 500 victims were taken from the camp and slain." Also, the fourth point says: "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group". Many children and babies were killed, and Khanum Palootzian – an eyewitness of the Armenian Genocide – said the following: "Pregnant women were eviscerated, their stomachs cut open with swords and their babies ripped out, thrown against the rocks."

The deaths