ARMENIAN TRADITIONAL PARTIES PREPARE FOR 95TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PanARMENIAN.Net
15.02.2010 21:31 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On February 14, at the Stepan Gulian office of Social
Democratic Hnchak Party Central Board representative of ARFD Bureau
Hrant Markarian and Social Democratic Hnchak Party Central Board
Sedrak Achemyan met. The chairman of the Central Board of Ramkavar
Liberal-Democratic Party Mike Harapyan joined the meeting by telephone.
During the meeting the representatives of Armenian traditional parties
discussed joint projects dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the
Armenian Genocide, press office of the Social Democratic Hnchak
Party reported.
The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.
Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of
food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized
the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars
and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also
recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC,
The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.