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I am curious if any country has ever admitted to genocide of their own volition without being diplomatically pressured to do so, as a matter of losing a war, sanctions or other not-so-voluntary means?

E.g. the public admittance (for which I am not sure what the proper legal format is) in Germany over the Holocaust as well as other Nazi war crimes didn't even start until about 1970 when Willy Brandt went to the Warsaw Ghetto. In addition to the long term issue of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, a less conspicuous is the avoidance of Serbia (and its big brother, Russia) to acknowledge the genocide in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Other examples include the massacres of the Natives in the Americas etc etc, none of which have, I believe and correct me if wrong, have been acknowledged as "genocide".

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    Republican Rome; Mongols under Genghis and descendants. Timurlane. Assyrian conquest of Israel. The list isnearly endless. Have you done any research?
    – Pieter Geerkens
    Jul 13 '15 at 21:15
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    This is my research
    – amphibient
    Jul 13 '15 at 21:17
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    Official Apology by Government of Canada to Aboriginal Peoples of Canada for Cultural Genocide: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/… and aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649
    – Pieter Geerkens
    Jul 13 '15 at 21:21
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    Because on the interwebs people have an agenda and are anonymous, so you can find all kinds of crazy, untrue affirmations (like that Canada did apologize, for example) without any kind of support. People writting books have an agenda, too, but are publicly known and cannot make that kind of affirmations without some kind of documental proof that they must make available to the public. Remember that neither science nor truth are democratics (the number of supporters of an idea is not a measure of how valid such an idea is).
    – SJuan76
    Jul 13 '15 at 22:53
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    Just to pick an example, try to ask in any Turkish speaking forum why Turkey has not yet apologized for the Armenian Genocide and see what happens...
    – SJuan76
    Jul 13 '15 at 22:54
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A Modern example of public apology:

Official Apology by Government of Canada to Aboriginal Peoples of Canada for Cultural Genocide:

  1. The Canadian Encyclopedia
  2. Government of Canada website
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  • I think Australia did one of those, too
    – SJuan76
    Jul 13 '15 at 22:46
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German authorities are moving toward officially recognizing as a "genocide" the colonial-era crackdown in Namibia by German troops more than a century ago in which more than 65,000 ethnic Hereros were killed.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/07/10/germany-moves-toward-recognizing-as-genocide-colonial-era-crackdown-against/

The Auswärtige Amt declared ... : "The war of extermination in Namibia from 1904 to 1908 was a crime against humanity and genocide." ...
Chancellor, President and the German Bundestag avoided a recognition of the genocide in the past. Presumably also for fear of demands of reparation that are being raised for years from the Namibian side. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/namibia-massaker-bundesregierung-spricht-von-voelkermord-a-1043117.html

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