Address of the Third President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on the Commemoration Day for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide
Nobody can silence the voice of justice. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire plotted and carried out the Armenian Genocide in the course of which, in the atmosphere of silence and indifference, one and a half million Armenians were tortured and murdered just because they were Armenians. They cannot demand justice for the devious crime committed against them, they cannot give testimony about the road to hell and death in agonizing pain which they had suffered in their own homeland 110 years ago. They cannot, while we – dignified Armenians, along with the civilized world must become their voice which must sound louder and louder. No crime must go unpunished. No people must carry the burden of the failed justice. More than a hundred years later, the ongoing genocides against humanity indicate clearly where the criminal silence and indifference will get us. We have no right to remain silent or even worse – to forget, and those who neglect or doubt the fact of the Genocide become the direct accomplices of this crime.
I bow to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and recall with gratitude our martyrs and heroes who survived and fought for dignity and for life.
The state policy of Turkey even today is based on denial, distortion of historical facts and propaganda against the truth, while standing courageously face to face with the truth, siding with justice will position Turkey as a supporter of universal human values, a civilized and responsible state which is ready to confront the dark pages of its history in the name of peace, reconciliation, and stability. It will allow to turn over a vicious page and not through oblivion but through justice. The Turkish government ought to understand that justice cannot be obliterated by erasing historical monuments, as that act itself is very telling, and if they look around themselves, they will see that the truth lives in the hundreds of thousands of testimonies given by the survivors and their descendants, in the records of foreign diplomats and scores of documentalists, in the Armenian buildings created in once Armenian populated towns and villages, in the Armenian epigraphies on the stones of the abandoned and ruined Armenian churches, in the statements of a few courageous Turkish intellectuals…
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Following in the footsteps of the Ottoman Empire, today Azerbaijan in Artsakh is erasing consistently Armenian traces, the millennia-long spiritual, religious and cultural heritage, distorts history.
Many of us remember what a collective power, unanimity, and all-Armenian unity we had just one decade ago – in 2015, when we commemorated the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. In those days, Armenia had become the platform where historical justice was demanded, where together with the civilized world the dignified memory of the survivors was honored, and the fight against genocides was pledged. It was not just a ceremony to mark the centennial of the Genocide; it was a clearly defined agenda, which was sealed by the all-Armenian Declaration. The Declaration, which signifies the national unity, should remain on the agenda of the Republic of Armenia until the historical justice is restored.
The rulers of Armenia must not forget that millions of lives that were disrupted 110 years ago, during these very days, can never become a bargaining chip, that the undeniable fact of the Armenian Genocide cannot be presented as an “obstacle to peace.” Such approach is nothing short of political immorality and betrayal. The craving to preserve one’s high position cannot outdo all-Armenian will and righteousness. The authorities, which disregard our national interests and endanger the very existence of the state must be removed, since the shortest road to losing statehood lies in renouncing our own rights and our dignity, in renouncing the struggle for justice and in erasing the historical memory. THUS:
TO REMEMBER IS OUR DUTY
TO DEMAND IS OUR RIGHT
TO FIGHT IS OUR OBLIGATION
