President: genocide denial is continuation of this crime

PanARMENIAN.Net - RA President Serzh Sargsyan issued a statement on the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marked today, April 24.

“We bow to the memory of innocent victims. The great majority of them didn’t even have graves. One of the aborigine and most ancient peoples of the region had been exterminated on its own land or sent into forced exile,” the President said.

“As a result of the first Genocide of the 20th century, the nation lost its spiritual and cultural assets accumulated through the millennia. The nation also lost material assets which had been appropriated by the Turkish government,” he said.

“It is our duty to realize and bring the attention of the international community to the fact that denial of the Genocide constitutes direct continuation of that very crime that is being carried out in modern Turkey.”

“Some are trying to persuade us “not to re-open the hundred years old wounds but to look forward.” Our response to this counsel is the following: Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink were not brought to trial a hundred years ago. They were tried right before our eyes. For the Armenian, as well as for the Turkish society this problem is current and urgent,” President Sargsyan noted.

“Each April 24th is the opportunity to renew our pledge to be loyal to the Armenian statehood whose existence precludes and will continue to preclude the repetition of the Armenian Genocide. And we, as a state and as a nation, in every corner of the world have been and will be fighting against all and every manifestation of the most horrendous crime against humanity – genocide, be it xenophobia or extermination, nonchalant silence or denial. We will fight with fervor as we are the people who survived the Genocide,” he concluded.