YEREVAN. – Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan issued a statement on the 98th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

“One of the region’s native and ancient peoples was annihilated at home and on the road of deportation. As a result of the first genocide of the 20th century, it lost spiritual and cultural values, which also had global significance. It lost material values, which the Turkish state and its inhabitants appropriated. It lost the opportunity and the right to live in its homeland.           

It is our duty to acknowledge and also to draw the attention of the international community on the fact that the denial of genocide is the direct continuation of the same crime, and this crime continues in modern-day Turkey. 

Some recommend us, “not to dig up the old wounds of one-hundred years ago, but rather to look ahead.” Our response to such recommendations is as follows: [Renowned Turkish writer and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature] Orhan Pamuk and Hrant Dink [the founder and chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly, who was gunned down in 2007 in front of his office building] were not tried [at court] one-hundred years ago; they tried them right before our eyes. This problem is contemporary and urgent.

Each and every April 24 is an opportunity to renew our covenant: To be faithful to the Armenian statehood, whose existence already rules out the repetition of the genocide of the Armenians. And we will fight against all manifestations of genocide, the gravest crime against humanity,” President Sargsyan’s statement reads in particular.