ANCCY CHAIRMAN HAGOP MANOUGIAN ADDRESSES PONTIAN GREEK GENOCIDE EVENT
Gibrahayer – Nicosia
Nicosia 20 May – ANCCy press release – The Armenian National Committee
of Cyprus (ANCY) chairman, Hagop Manougian, attended the commemoration
of the genocide of Pontian Greeks that was organised by the association
of "Pontian Greek Organizations" in Cyprus. The event, which took place
in Nicosia on 17th May 2009, was attended by a representative of the
president of Cyprus, the Ambassador of Georgia in Cyprus, Greek Army
representatives, the president of the "Evropaiko Komma" (European
Party) Demetris Syllouris, as well as other Cypriot organizations and
movements.
Addressing the event the ANCCY chairman spoke about the genocide
of the Greeks and Armenians in Pontus that took place between 1915 to
1922, elaborating on the massacres that occurred in the town of
Trabezounda (modern-day Trabizon) on the Black Sea coast. Half of the
population of the town were Christians, with Greeks and Armenians being
the majority. In 1915, the Turks, after slaughtering the male Armenian
population, began to gather all the women, the elderly and the
children, in order to send them off via caravans of death. The Armenian
families, hoping to save their children from extermination, handed them
over to their Greek neighbours. However, the Turks forced the Greeks to
hand over all the Armenian children that where hiding in their houses
and massacred them by drowning them in the Black Sea en masse.
Following, the Turks returned to exterminate the Greek population of
Pontus during which 350,000 Pontian Greeks where martyred.
If it was not for the genocide of the Armenian and Greeks,
Hagop Manougian articulated, today the city of Trabizon would have had
a population of half a million Armenians and Greeks. In light of the
close collaboration on national issues between Turkey and Azerbaijan,
Hagop Manougian called upon Greeks and Armenians, as well as their
respective governments, for a closer collaboration and cooperation in
their national struggles and a formation of a united front against
aggression from the common foes.
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