ARMENIA MARKS GENOCIDE ANNIVERSARY
By Ruzanna Khachatrian and Hovannes Shoghikian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
April 24 2007

Tens of thousands of people silently marched in Yerevan on Tuesday
in an annual remembrance of some 1.5 million victims of the Armenian
genocide in Ottoman Turkey.

The day marked the 92nd anniversary of the start of the 1915-1918
mass killings and deportations that affected virtually the entire
Armenian population of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Nearly two dozen
countries, among them France, Canada and Russia, have recognized the
massacres as the first genocide of the 20th century.

As always, the official commemoration of the anniversary began with a
prayer service at the genocide memorial on Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert
Hill that was led by the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church,
Garegin II, and attended by President Robert Kocharian and other top
government officials.

Ordinary Armenians laid flowers around the memorial’s eternal fire
throughout the day. The stream of people walking to the memorial
was thinner than usual due to heavy snow which is highly unusual
for this time of the year in Armenia. Mourners were again joined by
representatives of foreign diplomatic missions in Yerevan.

In a written address to the nation, Kocharian evoked the increasingly
successful Armenian campaign for international recognition of the
genocide. "The international community has realized that genocide is
a crime directed against not only a particular people but the entire
humanity," he said. "Denial and cover-up of that crime is no less
dangerous than its preparation and perpetration."

"A strong, democratic and prosperous Armenia must be the Armenian
people’s response to the masterminds, perpetrators and deniers of
the Armenian Genocide," added Kocharian.

In a separate statement, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian said genocide
recognition will remain on the Armenian government’s foreign policy
agenda. "We remember our past, but Armenia is moving forward, seeking
to establish normal relations with all of its neighbors," he said,
effectively reaffirming Yerevan’s support for an unconditional
normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties.

The Turkish government, which vehemently denies that the 1915 mass
killings constituted a genocide, says the establishment of bilateral
diplomatic relations and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border
is contingent on a halt to the genocide recognition drive.

In his statement, Sarkisian voiced solidarity with dissident Turkish
intellectuals recognizing the genocide. He also urged Armenians
to use the occasion for again paying tribute to the assassinated
Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink who also challenged the official
Turkish version of the bloody events.

Leaders of Armenia’s main political parties also visited the
genocide memorial. "A state can not live by denying its past," said
Hrant Markarian of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun). "Turkey must recognize the Armenian genocide as
soon as possible for the sake of Turkey’s future."

"For us, genocide recognition is, first of all, a matter of dignity
and historical truth and also a matter of Armenia’s national security,"
Markarian told RFE/RL.

Dashnaktsutyun branches in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora have for
decades been lobbying the parliaments and governments of Western
states to officially recognize the Armenian massacres as genocide.

The nationalist party controls one of the two main Armenian lobbying
groups in the United States that look set to push a genocide resolution
through the U.S. House of Representatives this year.

While praising Armenian efforts at genocide recognition, Raffi
Hovannisian, a U.S.-born opposition leader, sounded a note of
caution. "I believe that we must not excessively concentrate on or be
very buoyed this spate of recognitions because the Armenian genocide
and the loss of our people’s homeland is a fact affirmed by many
historians," he said.