Bethnahrin National Council on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day: We will Never Forget the Genocide on the Armenian and Christian Peoples

On the occasion of the commemoration of the Genocide on the Armenian and Christian peoples in the Ottoman Empire, the Bethnahrin National Council issued a statement calling on the perpetrators to come clean with their history and the international community to act.

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The Genocide on the Armenian and Christian Peoples will Never be Forgotten

Today, April 24, we commemorate the Genocide on the Armenian people. In the lands occupied by the Ottoman Empire, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) assumed a racist, genocidal mentality and enacted an agenda grounded in Turkism-Islamism. From 1910, the primary aim of this agenda became the destruction of the Christian peoples living within the borders of the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turk CUP leaders Cemal Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Enver Pasha allied to their evil plans Kurdish tribes working under the Hamidiye Regiments and the murderous paramilitary gangs of the Teşkilat Mahsusa. On 24 April 1915, the preconceived plan of genocide on the Christian peoples was implemented and its scope extended. In their inhumanity, the murderers brutally slaughtered everyone regardless if they were women, men, young, or old. Even children were not spared.

In the 1915 Genocide, around one and a half million Armenians and more than half a million Syriacs (Assyrians-Chaldeans-Arameans) were brutally massacred. Hundreds of thousands were exiled from their homes, and tens of thousands were forced to change their religion and deny their identity. The historical and cultural riches of the Christian peoples were destroyed or banned. Their traces were to be erased. Their property usurped. The Genocide survivors were sentenced to a life of severe trauma and fear. The discriminatory, racist, and genocidal politics of the CUP continue to this day. The Genocide against Christian peoples in the Middle East is one of the largest ongoing crimes against humanity. This crime can never be forgotten or denied. It is of decisive importance for the world public and the international community to act on this and to prevent new genocides.

The Bethnahrin National Council calls on the Republic of Turkey to recognize the Genocide of 1915, to stop covering up facts, and to confront its own history. We state here once again that every day we remember and feel the pain we share with the Armenian people. And we will continue our struggle until truth and recognition are accomplished. Respectfully, we commemorate the Armenians, Syriacs, and Pontus Greeks and other ethnicities who lost their lives in the Genocide of 1915. We denounce the murderers who committed the Genocide of 1915 and brought the ancient Christian peoples of the Middle East to the brink of extinction, and we reject all those who continue the mentality of the Genocide perpetrators.

Bethnahrin National Council
Presidential Board
20-04-2020

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