No alternative to int’l censure of Armenian Genocide: President

PanARMENIAN.Net - The 1915 Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire will be properly accessed, there being no other alternative, President Serzh Sargsyan stressed during the opening of the photo exhibition “A Fable of the East: Challenges Facing Christianity in the New Millennium” at Vittoriano Museum Complex in Rome.

“In a few months we’ll be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a crime against humanity, which, unfortunately, has not been properly characterized by now. However, there is simply no alternative: sooner or later it will be given a complete, comprehensive and unequivocal characterization.

The truth is that we can’t ensure a peaceful and safe future without condemning the crimes of the past,” the President said.

“Failing to give a clear and unambiguous characterization of genocides, dissemination of xenophobic sentiments, barbaric annihilation of cultural values and all other atrocities of such kind in due time results in the repetition of all that. I can give you a lot of examples.

I will give you only one of them. Some time ago we saw Jugha's medieval Armenian cross-stones, the prominent monuments of the Armenian people's identity, culture and belief, deliberately exterminated. The extermination of Jugha's century-old cemetery with its thousands of finely-designed and unique cross-stones dating from the 9th to 16th centuries in the last two decades is the brutal manifestation of the policy aimed at complete extermination of the Christian-Armenian cultural heritage across the entire territory of Nakhijevan and Azerbaijan, which has not yet properly characterized by the international community. The autrocity might lead thousands to believe that age-old cultural monuments of an entire people can be wrecked to the ground without impunity. Of course, very many of them did so. In that case why not repeat such an easily implemented act in Iraq, Syria and in some other place?

One thing is certain: There is not a moment to lose if we are to inculcate tolerance, including religious tolerance. We do not have a right to remain irresolute,” the Armenian leader stressed.