My discomfort, after a decade of researching and writing about the Armenian genocide, is that Operation Nemesis was needed in the first place. The assassinations of Talât and his confederates is one of few moments of justice for those whose bones still lay scattered across Anatolia. And that should be discomforting to everyone.

Today the site of the former UN base in Potočari is the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center & Cemetery. There are 8,372 white headstones dotted around the green roof of the memorial centre to commemorate the genocide of Bosnians in Srebrenica, an event that has the distinction of being the single worst act of genocide committed on European soil since World War II.

In the last few weeks, a mass exodus of more than a quarter of a million Rohingya, terrorised and starving, have fled towards the Bangladeshi border – a frontier that the Burmese military, known as the Tatmadaw, have booby trapped with land mines. This unfolding tragedy is a reminder that some people are considered superfluous. It’s a reminder that some lives matter less than others and that some people are sacrificed to serve the political and economic ends of others.