ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MUSEUM TO EXHIBIT EXCLUSIVE MATERIALS BY 95TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
PanARMENIAN.Net
03.03.2010 17:35 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Museum-Institute of Armenian Genocide in
collaboration with the Ministry of Diaspora will organize a two-day
international conference timed to 95th anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide. The main topic of the conference will be the question of
cultural genocide, Hayk Demoyan , director of the Museum-Institute
of Armenian Genocide told a news conference in Yerevan.
On April 23 the museum will exhibit some 50 exclusive materials
collected over the past two years. "At the moment we are working
on a major project to expand the building, and to organize a new
exhibition," the museum’s director said. Originals of the newspapers
featuring the massacres of Armenians published in other countries
will also be exposed.
" We intend to provide grants to foreign students who want to
specialize in the field of Armenian studies, particularly in Armenian
Genocide," Hayk Demoyan said.
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.