President Joe Biden officially recognised the Armenian Genocide of the early 1900s on Saturday, April 24, 2021 becoming the first U.S. leader to ever call the mass killing a “genocide.”
Saturday marks the annual Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which recognises the Ottoman Empire’s killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians from a traumatic period that lasted sometime between 1915 and 1923.
“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden, 78, began his statement. “Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.”
The president added, “We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”
Continuing his message, Biden wrote, “Of those who survived, most were forced to find new homes and new lives around the world, including in the United States. With strength and resilience, the Armenian people survived and rebuilt their community.”
“Over the decades Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores. We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated,” he continued.
Then, writing “as we mourn what was lost,” Biden implored that we must look ahead to the future, “toward the world that we wish to build for our children.”
“A world unstained by the daily evils of bigotry and intolerance, where human rights are respected, and where all people are able to pursue their lives in dignity and security,” he said. “Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world. And let us pursue healing and reconciliation for all the people of the world.
Closing out his statement, Biden concluded: “The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.”
Source: People
