ArmenPress
March 12 2004
URUGUAY PARLIAMENT RECOGNIZES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
YEREVAN, MARCH 12, ARMENPRESS: The lower chamber of Uruguay’s
parliament approved a bill on March 10, which indirectly recognizes
the Armenian Genocide. The bill calls for April 24 to be “the
commemoration day of Armenians martyred in 1915,” and obligates the
state owned media to “cover those events” on that day.
There is no reference to “genocide” in the wording of the bill,
though parliament speeches in favor of the bill did not avoid calling
the genocide, a “genocide.” The resolution will become a law with the
president’s signature.
In 2000, Uruguay’s Senate unanimously passed a resolution marking
“April 24 a national day of remembrance for the Armenian Genocide.”
In 1965, the Armenian National Committee of Uruguay advanced the
passage of an Armenian Genocide resolution in Uruguay’s
parliament–to mark the first time a country officially recognized
the genocide of Armenians.
At the time, the author of that resolution Senator Dr. Alberto
Sid, said that the bill aimed to register Uruguay’s official position
on the Armenian Genocide as a crime against humanity.
Interestingly, the world’s first April 24 demonstration also took
place in Uruguay, in 1964.