French ex-envoy: Armenians still threatened because they are Armenians

PanARMENIAN.Net - France's former ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacôte has paid a tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and said that Armenians are still being threatened because they are Armenians.

Lacôte went on to share excerpts from three famous texts:

-Who will remember the extermination of the Armenians? [Hitler to his generals, August 22, 1939]

-I told to the Silence the story of the extermination of the Armenian people. I made the Silence attentive to the fact that it was of paramount importance to talk about it openly. I say: everyone should know about it! Because how will we be able to prevent a new extermination, if everyone claims to have known nothing and to have prevented nothing because these are things that we cannot even imagine? [Edgar Hilsenrath, "The Story of the Last Thought"]

- “Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the murder of a million people a lesser crime than the murder of a single individual? [Raphael Lemkin, after the Tehlirian trial]

"These three quotes seem to form a fictitious dialogue between Hitler, the German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath and the jurist Raphael Lemkin (born in Lviv and creator of the word “genocide”) and remind us that genocide is the work of those who commit it but also of those who deny it, of those who leave it unpunished and of those who forget it," the diplomat said.

"To this day Armenians are threatened because they are Armenians. To this day peoples are threatened with genocide. Stand on the right side of memory, truth and justice."

On April 24, 1915, a large group of Armenian intellectuals was rounded up and assassinated in Constantinople by the Ottoman government. On April 24, 2022, Armenians worldwide are commemorating the 107th anniversary of the Genocide which continued until 1923. Some three dozen countries, hundreds of local government bodies and international organizations have so far recognized the killings of 1.5 million Armenians as Genocide. Turkey denies to this day.