March 15, 2022: The Zoryan Institute is pleased to share the release of the new book Genocídio Armênio: Protótipo do Genocídio dos Tempos Modernos, which features the papers presented in the 2010 conference “95 Anos do Genocídio Armênio: O Protótipo do Genocídio dos Tempos Modernos”. This international conference, hosted in São Paulo Brazil, and co-organized by Zoryan Institute, the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Consulate of the Republic of Armenia, brought together some of the world’s top specialists in their fields to discuss the Armenian Genocide as the prototype of modern genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries.
A number of Zoryan Institute Board Members, faculty members, GHRUP alumni and affiliated scholars were in attendance at this conference, including Prof. Roger W. Smith, Vahakn N. Dadrian, K.M. Greg Sarkissian, Herbert Hirsch, and Robert Melson. It was Melson who first developed the concept and coined the expression in 1995 that the Armenian Genocide was the precursor and prototype of modern genocide. The conference also featured Dalmo de Abreu Dallari, former Director of the USP Law School, who was an observer at the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in Paris in 1984, when the verdict on the Armenian Genocide was issued. His comments prompted the Armenian community of São Paulo to translate A Crime of Silence, the proceedings of the Tribunal, into Portuguese as their first effort at commemorating the Armenian Genocide in the way of a book.
Hosting this anniversary conference in São Paulo was especially significant, as Brazil was among the very first countries to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and one of the very first countries to sign the UN Genocide Convention that same year. Additionally, the State of São Paulo has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide as a classic case of a gross violation of human rights since 1989.