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Thousands Mark Genocide Anniversary In Armenia

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  • Thousands Mark Genocide Anniversary In Armenia

    THOUSANDS MARK GENOCIDE ANNIVERSARY IN ARMENIA

    Agence France Presse
    April 24, 2013 Wednesday 10:08 AM GMT

    Thousands flocked on Wednesday to a hilltop memorial above Yerevan to
    mark the 98th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians in the
    Ottoman Empire during World War I which Armenia wants recognised
    internationally as a genocide.

    In the annual ceremony broadcast by all national television channels,
    huge crowds headed to the memorial that commemorates the massacres
    to lay flowers at the eternal flame.

    "Today we bow to the memory of innocent victims," President Serzh
    Sarkisian said in a statement.

    He attacked modern-day Turkey for refusing to accept that the killings
    were genocide -- a term strongly rejected by Ankara.

    "It is our duty to realise and to bring the attention of the
    international community to the fact that denial of the genocide
    constitutes direct continuation of that very crime," said Sarkisian.

    On Tuesday night, activists of the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party's
    youth wing burned Turkish flags and led a 10,000-strong torch-lit
    procession in Yerevan.

    "Each torch symbolises our eternal fight. The blood of innocent
    victims will never be forgotten," one of the march participants,
    23-year-old Ashot Kazarian, told AFP.

    Using both diplomatic levers and its influential diaspora abroad,
    Armenia has long sought to win the massacre's international recognition
    as genocide.

    Last year, a diplomatic row erupted between Ankara and Paris when
    France's then-president Nicolas Sarkozy initiated a law criminalising
    denial of the mass killings as genocide.

    France's top court later struck down the law on the grounds that it
    infringed freedom of expression.

    Armenians say up to 1.5 million people were killed during World War I
    as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, a claim supported by several
    other countries.

    Turkey argues 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks
    died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman
    rulers sided with invading Russian troops.

    Over 20 countries have so far recognised the massacres as genocide.

    mkh-im/sjw

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