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altered the existing society where the previous order was replaced by totalitarian regimes (e.g. thecases of Young Turks and Nazis). These events were then often followed by a period of globalwar where large scale massacres of the victimised groups were implemented under cover ofwar. 35 This paper will try to search for and identify these factors in the studied material in orderto answer the first question about whether the above mentioned theoretical model of genocide isapplicable on the Armenian massacres from the Swedish material’s point of view. What isrelevant here, are the key words “elimination”, “annihilation”, and “extermination” of the“Armenian nation”, or the “Armenian race”, and “state orchestrated” actions, which will be usedto indicate how the Armenian massacres were described in Sweden, but especially by Swedishrepresentatives in Ottoman Turkey.The genocide is consummated by its final stage: denial. Israel Charny calls it “an attack on thecollective identity and national cultural continuity of the victim people”. 36 Richard G.Hovannisian argues:Following the physical destruction of a people and their material culture, memory is all that is leftand is targeted as the last victim. Complete annihilation of a people requires the banishment ofrecollection and the suffocation of remembrance. Falsification, deception, and half-truths reducewhat was to what may have been or perhaps what was not at all. 37Genocide scholar and political theorist, Roger W. Smith, writes: “Memory, in any case,requires renewal.” By resorting to denial and suppression of any discussion about the committedcrimes, the perpetrator uses “silence where possible and diplomacy when necessary to erode theremaining traces of the once committed genocide. 38Denial could be seen as a highly human behaviour, namely as a defence mechanism. 39 Bydenial, the perpetrators suppress the horrors and refuse the guilt for committing an act, probablythe most despised crime in modern time, which they condemn in public. Genocide denial,however, is not limited to the perpetrator alone. A third party could also rely on denial of anongoing genocide, or one already implemented, in order to “avoid responsibility for doingsomething about it… Thus, the Clinton administration resisted labelling the Rwandan genocideof 1994 as ‘genocide’ in order to avoid having to become directly involved in trying to stop it orpunish the perpetrators.” 40 Another key factor, closely related to the latter category, is theinteraction of humanitarian intervention and political and economic gains. An intervention in anact of genocide would endanger the good relations with the perpetrating state, thus jeopardisingthe benefits of ongoing or future economic and trade exchanges. 41 This is one of the key factors35 Alvarez, 2001 p. 30; Melson, 1992.36 Charny, 2000, p. 159.37 Hovannisian, 1999, p. 202. Also see Bevan, 2006, p. 25; Shaw, 2003, p. 119-120.38 Smith, 1992, p. 3, 8.39 Suedfeld and Schaller, 2002, p. 6940 Charny, 2000, p. 159; Staub, New Jersey, 2002, p. 26.41 Charny, 1994, p. 67-68; Staub, New Jersey, 2002, p. 26.12