PRESIDENT SARGSYAN’S MESSAGE ON THE DAY OF COMMEMORATION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE VICTIMS

armradio.am
24.04.2009 14:14

Dear compatriots, Today we bow down before the memory of the innocent
victims of the Armenian Genocide.

94 years ago the Ottoman Empire organized and perpetrated the Armenian
Genocide on the state level. A huge part of our people was coolly
annihilated. Today the Genocide in not only a past reality, but also an
integral part of the present and the destiny of the Genocide survivors,
their heirs and all Armenians.

The crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation either in
people’s memory or before the court of history. The international
recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is an issue
of restoration of the historical justice for the Armenian people and
the Republic of Armenia.

The Armenian nation is not lonely in pursuing the condemnation of
the crime of genocide. At this time of remembrance we express our
heartfelt gratitude to the states, organizations and individuals who
support us in our quest for condemnation and prevention of this crime
against humanity. We support those Turkish intellectuals who struggle
for historic justice, who share our pain.

We have said numerous times that the process of recognition of the
Armenian Genocide is not directed against the Turkish people and
recognition of the Genocide by Turkey is not a precondition for the
establishment of bilateral relations.

At the time the lessons of the Armenian Genocide were ignored. During
the last decades sophisticated mechanisms against the Genocide denial
and denunciation of the recognition process have been developed. To
deny Genocide means to through into oblivion this crime against
humanity and to pave the way for new similarly ferocious crimes. Today,
when the world faces new instances of hatred, nationalism, and
intolerance, a united and unanimous response of the human kind to the
crimes against humanity becomes of crucial importance. As President
of the Republic of Armenia, I wish no other nation ever goes through
that tragedy again.

Dear Compatriots,

Every one of our innocent victims has a name, family and story. The
committed crime has concrete culprits – those who planned it and
those who executed. Many of those tragic stories have not been told
yet. Even though a huge amount of work has been conducted, the world
is yet to see abundant evidence testifying to the fact of the Armenian
Genocide, testimonies, and documented facts.

Centuries-long Armenian history has many heroic pages, pages of losses
and pages of creation. Today, when we are building our new statehood,
when we shape new biography of our freedom we prove that we ourselves
can be the guarantors of our security and eliminate any possibility
of the repetition of similar crimes in the future.