YEREVAN. – Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has issued a message on the occasion of the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Armenian News-NEWS.am was informed about this by the government. The message reads as follows:

Dear compatriots,

As for many decades now, today we are commemorating the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide. We pay respect to the 1.5 million martyrs who fell victim to the criminal policies of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

106 years ago, the first genocide of the 20th century was perpetrated by the Young Turk government in the Ottoman Empire. What happened in those days was described by the great powers as a crime against mankind and human civilization.

Millennia will pass, but we, the Armenians, will continue to commemorate the Genocide; we will not let the world forget that on April 24, 1915, the brass of the Armenian intelligentsia was arrested and sentenced to death in the Ottoman Empire. Top intellectuals, clergy and the cultural elite were beheaded at one stroke.

The Armenians were deprived of their legitimate right to live in their historic cradle. They were subjected to massacres, expelled from their homeland suffering unprecedented losses. The damage inflicted on our people’s cultural and religious heritage is beyond any estimate.