Vigils, marches and demonstrations continue in Los Angeles to commemorate the killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire more than a century ago.
Advertisement
Actor George Clooney traveled to Armenia this week for the presentation of a new award on the eve of official commemorations of what is largely referred to as the “Armenian Genocide”.The protest actions will be held in NY and other large cities of the US with participation of representatives of Azerbaijani, Pakistani and Arabian communities.
Ankara estimates the number of Armenians killed between 1915 and 1917 around 300,000 to 500,000, as opposed to 1.5 million claimed by Armenians, and considers the massacre as the “casualties” of World War I.
Turkey’s government has expressed condolences to Armenians but has denied that the killings constituted a genocide, arguing that many Ottoman Turks also were killed in that era of war and upheaval.
Clooney presented the first Aurora Prize, an award recognizing an individual’s work to advance humanitarian causes, to Marguerite Barankitse, who saved thousands of lives and cared for orphans and refugees amid the Burundi civil war.
The massacres happened in 1915 but the pain, as people gathered at a memorial near the capital Yerevan, and for those across Armenia is still raw. The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the twentieth century.
Memorial events in Armenia kicked off late Saturday with a torchlight march to the memorial complex. Clooney said: “The whole world”.
A staunch advocate of the massacre’s recognition as genocide, Clooney arrived in the ex-Soviet nation on Saturday to take part in the hugely symbolic ceremonies.
“I think it is ridiculous not to talk about it in terms of genocide, because, of course, it was.”
Meanwhile, barricades were set up by police to separate the Armenian protesters from the Turkish supporters, who also held national flags and signs that read “stop hating”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that “Karabakh will one day return to its original owner”, while his prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, vowed to stand by Baku “until the apocalypse”.
Advertisement
Fighting earlier this month marked the worst violence since 1994 and both sides on Sunday reported the shelling of their positions by enemy fire.
