Human Rights In The Armenian Genocide

“Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, independent, and indivisible.” (Webster Online Dictionary) These rights are taken away during genocide. Throughout history genocides have taken place time and time again from the Armenian genocide of 1915, to the Darfur genocide starting in 2003, and is still in progress today. Genocide is a barbaric practice that dehumanizes people and takes away their basic human rights ; American Foreign policy should be to intervene in foreign affairs when human rights violations are evident. In 1915 leaders in the Turkish government devised a plan to exterminate and or expel all Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. There are several different reports varying in content, but it is believed that there were about 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at the time of the massacre. By the 1920’s 1.5 of the 2 million Armenians were dead and the majority of the remaining had been deported. Today most historians will classify the events as a genocide ; but to this day the Turkish

That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. Immediately after that Turkish people began forcibly removing any Armenian citizen that they came into contact with. They were taken from their homes, schools, places of business, and just simply off the streets. They were gathered in large groups and sent on “death marches” ; Turkish soldiers would walk beside them bearing weaponry as they marched into the desert. They were often forced to remove their clothes, and had no food or water. These “death marches” had no destination, people would drop dead from exhaustion and if you stopped to rest you were shot on