Today is April 24, the day of remembrance of the holy martyrs of the Armenian Genocide. In Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora, Armenians and progressive humanity remember the victims of the first Genocide of the 20th century. The Armenian Genocide was carried out in several phases, but the symbolic beginning is considered to be April 24, 1915, when 235 prominent Armenian intellectuals were arrested in Constantinople on the false charge of organizing an uprising in Van. This was followed by the arrest of another 600 influential Armenians, all of whom were brutally killed on the road to exile.
From 1892 to 1923, the governments of the Ottoman Empire — those of Abdul Hamid, then the Young Turks under the leadership of Talaat, Enver and Jemal, Behaeddin Shakir and other Ittihadists, and subsequently the government of Mustafa Kemal — subjected the Armenian population of Western Armenia, Cilicia and the provinces of Ottoman Turkey to mass deportation and annihilation.
Nearly 1.5 million people were exterminated between 1915 and 1923. More than half a million Armenians were scattered around the world, forming the Armenian Diaspora. As a result of the Genocide, Western Armenia was deprived of its indigenous people, and Armenians of their historic homeland. Thousands of historical and architectural monuments and memorials, and manuscripts were destroyed, and sanctuaries were desecrated. More than 60 Armenian cities and 2,500 villages were burned and looted. The formulation “crime against humanity” was first applied in condemning the Armenian Genocide, when Britain, Russia and France, at war with Ottoman Turkey, adopted a joint declaration on May 24, 1915, demanding an end to the slaughter of Armenians, promising to find and punish all the organizers of the unprecedented crime. The term genocide was formulated by Raphael Lemkin on the basis of the Armenian massacres.
The Armenian Genocide has been recognized by several dozen states, the first being Uruguay in 1965, followed by Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Canada, Venezuela, Argentina, the Czech Republic, the Vatican, and the United States. The Armenian Genocide has also been recognized and condemned by the UN General Assembly, the European Parliament, the World Council of Churches and other international organizations.
