Armenian President Serge Sarkisian thanked world leaders who attended a memorial service for the victims of a mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago.
Speaking under cloudy skies at the site of Armenia's permanent memorial to the victims slaughtered during World War One, Sarkisian said the presence of such leaders as the presidents of France, Russia, Serbia and the Greek-ruled part of Cyprus confirm their commitment to human values by saying nothing is forgotten.
French, Russian leaders
French President Francois Hollande said France, which is home to a sizable Armenian community, will never forget the loss of the Armenians killed by Turks who believed the Armenians might side with the enemy, Russia, during the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke, saying there can be no justification for mass murder.
They and other leaders each contributed a single yellow rose to the center of a wreath fashioned to resemble the forget-me-not, a flower serving as the symbol of the commemoration.
Hundreds of thousands of people have come to Yerevan to commemorate the killings, an event of diplomatic contention.
Turkey denies the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was a genocide. It says the Armenians died during fighting in a civil war in which they were aided by the Russians. It says the number of deaths is far fewer than 1.5 million.
Turkey formally protests against any government that calls the killings a genocide. It recalled its representative to the Vatican earlier this month after Pope Francis called the Armenian massacre the first genocide of the 20th century.
US statement
U.S. President Barack Obama released a statement Thursday in which he commemorated the killings, calling them a "massacre," "a terrible carnage," and "horrific violence," but did not use the word genocide. The statement raised the ire of U.S.-Armenian interest groups, who said the president should have taken a stronger stand.
On Thursday, German President Joachim Gauck for the first time called the killings a genocide and said Germany bears some of the responsibility.
Gauck said at a service in the Berlin Cathedral that as a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire, German soldiers took part in planning and implementing deportations of Armenians.
"Women, men, children, and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten, and shot to death," he said. "This planned and calculated criminal act targeted Armenians for a sole reason: because they were Armenians."
The Armenian church granted sainthood to the victims during a service Thursday in Echmiadzin, a town that provided sanctuary for those escaping the killings.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1OO7sF4
0 comments:
Post a Comment