The issue focused on an image on the screen of a computer that used the term "Armenian genocide" in an article that had been published in the July 30, 2000 issue of the online magazine The Guardian. The article was written by Paul Williams, a British academic and former executive director of the British Committee for the Investigation of the Armenian Genocide. The article was written in response to a statement by the British Humanist Association that it had called for the British government to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court.