Cyprus News Agency
Friday
Parliament calls on international community to recognise Armenian genocide
The Cypriot parliament has called on the international community to recognise and condemn the Armenian genocide.
Addressing the plenary before its legislative work here, today, House of Representatives President Demetris Syllouris marked the anniversary of April 24th.
Even today, he said, "Turkey continues to be provocative, describing the murder of one and a half million of Armenians as displacement and continues without remorse a policy of ethnic minority cleansing with its criminal actions against the Kurds in Syria."
Cypriot MPs have declared April 24th as the National Day of Commemorating the Armenian genocide since 1990 and have passed relevant resolutions to that effect.
Today, he noted, "we would like to once more condemn Turkey`s policy of ethnic cleansing and of expansion and to express our full support to our friends, the people of Armenia as well as to reiterate once more our call to the international community to globally recongise and condemn the Armenian genocide."
"It is indeed inconceivable that civilised states, which appear as protectors of human rights and of democracy, continue to give in to the pressure exerted by Turkey, who takes advantage of its geostrategic position and its purchasing power, deterring them from recognising the Armenian genocide," Vartkes Mahtesian, Armenian Representative to the House of Representatives said addressing the plenary.
He described the Armenian genocide as "a tragedy which shook the civilised world at the time and which has caused the deepest wounds in the history of the Armenian nation."
According to Mahtesian, between 1915 and 1923 more than 1,5 million innocent Armenians suffered torture, were put to death, slaughtered or forced to walk to their death in the inhospitable Deir ez-Zor desert, while more than 800,000 Armenians became refugees and had to flee to many different parts of the world, shaping the Armenian Diaspora as it is known today.