ARMENIAN COMMUNITY IN CYPRUS URGES TURKEY TO ACKNOWLEDGE GENOCIDE

PanARMENIAN.Net
25.04.2008 17:14 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian community in Cyprus yesterday marked
the 93rd anniversary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, with a call to
Ankara to recognize its historical crimes.

The anniversary was marked by a series of events under the auspices
of House of Representatives President Marios Karoyan.

Yesterday’s event involved a service at the Armenian Church, and a
march in Nicosia.

Vartkes Mahdessian, Armenian Representative at the House, said that
the message the Armenian people wanted to send was one of continuous
struggle to internationalize and resolve the Armenian question,
and also to receive acknowledgement and condemnation of the genocide.

"Armenians will continue their struggle until the final justification,
a duty owed to the victims of the genocide," Mahdessian said. "It
is time that the political leadership of Turkey found the courage
to recognize the crimes the previous Turkish governments committed,
justifying the victims of not only the Armenian genocide but of the
Greeks, Cypriots, Kurds, Arabs, Pontic Greeks and other peoples,
in the hope that it will at some point join the European Union."

Karoyan, in an official statement, reiterated the support of the
House to the demand of the Armenian people for the recognition of
the genocide.

He called on Turkey to recognize and admit its crime and to apologize
to the Armenian people and humanity as a whole.

"We do not beg, we do not implore. We demand justice from the
contemporary democratic humanity, the entire international community,
all the nations and all the peoples. Nothing more, nothing less,"
he said, Cyprus Mail reports.