HRANUSH HAKOBYAN: THE CULTURAL GENOCIDE WAS A STATE-RUN POLICY
Sona Hakobyan

"Radiolur"
20.04.2010 14:45

April 24th will mark the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Almost a century has passed, but the pain is so deep and the loss is so
great that the wounds have not yet been healed, Armenian Minister of
Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan said, speaking at the scientific conference
on Cultural Genocide.

"It’s possible to restore the material losses, while the religious
and cultural losses cannot be brought back,"she added.

Speaking about cultural genocide, Minister Hakobyan assured that it
was a state-run policy. "In other words, it was cultural vandalism,
the perpetrators of which should be punished," she said.

"The policy continues into today and a proof of this is the consistent
destruction of Armenian cultural values in Turkey," said Hayk Demoyan,
Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute (AGMI).

The conference on Cultural Genocide has been organized by the AGMI and
the Ministry of Diaspora as part of the series of events dedicated
to the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The conference
aims to discuss the continuing policy of the mass destruction of the
Armenian cultural heritage in the Ottoman Empire and on the territory
of the modern Turkish Republic, as well as to present its ideological,
political and cultural motivations and its consequences for human
civilization.