Armenia Marks Genocide Anniversary

Tens of thousands of people silently marched in Yerevan on Tuesday in an annual remembrance of some 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. The day marked the 92nd anniversary of the start of the 1915-1918 mass killings and deportations that affected virtually the entire Armenian population of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Nearly two dozen countries, among them France, Canada and Russia, have recognized the massacres as the first genocide of the 20th century. As always, the official commemoration of the anniversary began with a prayer service at the genocide memorial on Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert Hill that was led by the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Garegin II, and attended by President Robert Kocharian and other top government officials. Ordinary Armenians laid flowers around the memorial’s eternal fire throughout the day. The stream of people walking to the memorial was thinner than usual due to heavy snow which is highly unusual for this time of the year in Armenia. Mourners were again joined by representatives of foreign diplomatic missions in Yerevan. In a written address to the nation, Kocharian evoked the increasingly successful Armenian campaign for international recognition of the genocide. “The international community has realized that genocide is a crime directed against not only a particular people but the entire humanity,” he said. “Denial and cover-up of that crime is no less dangerous than its preparation and perpetration.”