YEREVAN. – A total of 56 ethnic deportations occurred in the USSR, and the Armenians were subjected to ethnic deportation four times. 

Ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan stated the aforesaid at Tuesday’s public assembly at the memorial to the victims of the political repressions of the ex-USSR, in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan.

“June 14 has been selected as the day of the great forcible exile of the Armenians,” said Kharatyan. “The Armenians [in the ex-USSR] were subjected to ethnic deportation four times: The 1937 deportation of the Armenians and the Kurds from Armenia and Azerbaijan. (…) Then there was the deportation of Hamshen Armenians, the deportation of Crimea Armenians; nine thousand Armenians from Crimea were exiled to other areas. And, finally, on June 14, 1949, the Dashnaks [i.e. the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Dashnaktsutyun Party members] and former Turkish nationals [who are Armenian] were deported from Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, [and]  Krasnodar Krai [i.e. region of Russia].

“Armenia does not have a law condemning ethnic deportation, to this day. (…) This is our ‘reparation’ [to the deportation victims], for which the [Armenian] authorities are to blame.”