Samuel Osborne - Armenian genocide: Thousands march around the world to demand recognition for atrocity
Thousands of people
have marched around the world to commemorate the deaths of an estimated 1.5
million Armenians by Ottoman Turks & demand recognition
for the atrocity as a genocide. Armenians and many
historians consider the killings during the First World War to be a genocide.
Although Turkey, a successor to
the Ottoman
Empire, accepts many Christian Armenians were killed in fighting during the
war, the Muslim-majority country vehemently denies the killings in 1915
amounted to a genocide.
On Tuesday, thousands
of Armenian-Americans took to the streets of Los Angeles, waving
Armenian and American flags and carrying signs reading “1915 never again” and
“Turkish denial must end.”
The city’s mayor, Eric
Garcetti, marched alongside the demonstrators, saying in a speech the genocide
was “a human tragedy.” “To be a part of the
human family we must accept our tragedies,” Mr Garcetti said. “And all of us
will say, ‘Never again.”’
Many called for a
formal recognition of the genocide from countries such as the United States,
Turkey and the United Kingdom, where it is recognised by the devolved
governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but not England. Donald Trump has
called it “one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century” but stopped
short of using the word genocide. Turkey’s
president, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, said the country has a responsibility to share the pain of its
Armenian citizens over the “1915 events.” In Yerevan, Armenia’s
capital, tens of thousands of Armenians marched to a hilltop memorial
dedicated to the victims of the massacres... read more:
More posts on the Armenian genocide
