Pashinian is facing such accusations after questioning late last week the decades-long Armenian campaign for international recognition of the genocide.
“We must understand what happened and why it happened, how we perceived it and through whom we perceived. How is it that in 1939 there was no Armenian genocide [recognition] agenda and how is it that in 1950 the Armenian genocide agenda emerged?” he told a group of Diaspora Armenians during a visit to Switzerland.
Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that he cast doubt on the fact that the World War One-era slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide. Pashinian has still not responded to the uproar, leaving it to his political allies to state that he did not question or deny the genocide recognized by over three dozen nations, including the United States.
In a statement, the Lemkin Institute charged that the Armenian premier “appeared to cast doubt on the established historical narrative of the 1915 Armenian Genocide” and is “supporting Turkish and Azerbaijani denialist narratives once again.”
“By implying that basic questions about the Armenian Genocide, such as ‘what happened and why it happened,’ have not yet been adequately answered, Pashinian’s statement works to challenge the Armenian Genocide as an established historical fact,” it said. “But these basic questions have driven historical inquiry into the Armenian genocide for over a century.
“Even Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term ‘genocide’ during World War II, studied the Armenian case and used it as a basis for the development of his concept of genocide in the 1920s and 1930s. While there are differences amongst scholars about certain details and interpretations, the basic narrative, the whys and the whats, are not in doubt.”
“The lack of formal recognition of the genocide in 1939 was not because the event itself was unclear or unknown, but because the legal, conceptual, and institutional framework to fully describe and address such atrocities did not yet exist. Even Hitler himself knew of the magnitude of the horror of the Armenian genocide, likening it to his plans for eastward expansion,” added the statement.
Pashinian has also come under fire from some of the Armenian Diaspora groups that have long lobbied Western governments to recognize the genocide. A coalition of Swiss-Armenian organizations, the CAAS, expressed “deep concern” at his remarks on Thursday, saying that they “undermine the memory of the Armenian Genocide.” The ANC-International, a worldwide lobbying arm of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), went farther, accusing Pashinian of “outright genocide denial.”
The Lemkin Institute, which comprises American and other genocide scholars, already condemned Pashinian for his statement on the 109th anniversary of the genocide commemorated in April 2024. In that statement, the premier no longer called for its wider international recognition and instead put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the word “genocide.”