Agence France Presse — English
May 28, 2005 Saturday 3:58 PM GMT

Hundreds of thousands remember Armenia’s founding with dance around
mountain

YEREVAN

Some 200,000 Armenians gathered around Armenia’s highest mountain
Saturday to commemorate the country’s founding in 1918, dancing a
round in a chain that stretched more than 160 kilometers.

Virtually all sported an orange hat with a white bill and wore bright
clothing as they formed a chain of 163 kilometers (more than 100
miles) to dance a traditional round around Mount Aragats, 87 years to
the day Armenia was founded — among them President Robert Kocharian.

“The reestablishment of an Armenian state in 1918 was not only a
historical but also a psychological upheaval,” he said.

“The 28th of May is the festival of a people’s rebirth, a people
which was pushed to the limits of destruction,” the president told
his countrymen and -women, in a clear allusion to the massacre of
Armenians between 1915 and 1917 by the Turks — which Yerevan
qualifies as genocide but an accusation which Ankara rejects.

Several ceremonies and dances also took place in other countries with
large Armenian expatriate communities.

The ceremony was followed by a festival featuring performances by
around 200 professional dance groups.