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Sweden Lags on Turkey Genocide Recognition
By Rebecca Martin
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Despite a request from the Riksdag last year, the Swedish government still hasn't recognized the genocide of Armenians and other ethnic groups in WWI. "It is the way the have stifled it which is surprising - how they have refused to comment on it - just like Turkey did for a good 95 years," Vahagn Avedian, spokesperson for the Union of Armenian Associations in Sweden told the Local. The motion to recognize the genocide of Armenians and other ethnic groups - Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks - was passed in the Riksdag in March last year. Though it had the backing of members of five of the seven Swedish parliamentary parties, the vote's outcome was uncertain until the very last minute as the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs had recommended a rejection. The government was against, and both Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and foreign minister Carl Bildt had dissociated themselves from the motion. "We think it is a mistake to politicise history," Bildt wrote on his personal blog at the time. But with four centre-right politicians choosing to vote with the opposition, the resolution was eventually passed in March last year, by a single vote. Turkey immediately elected to recall its ambassador to Sweden, Zerg



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