Armenians demand justice for Turkish massacres’ victims

On the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Armenian youth called on the international community to achieve justice and hold the Turkish occupation state accountable for committing massacres, during a protest held in the city of Qamishlo.

The Ottomans committed a series of massacres against the Armenians starting in mid-1914, but the widely recognized beginning of the genocide is April 24, 1915. On that day, the Ottomans rounded up hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, arrested them, and deported them from Istanbul, most of whom met their death.

On the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Armenian Democratic Youth Movement organized a protest today in front of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) building in Qamishlo, part of the Jazira Canton, demanding justice and accountability for the crimes and massacres committed by the Turkish occupation state.

Participants in the protest held banners that read: “We will not forget, we will not forgive, April 24, we demand recognition, we demand justice, we demand the right of return”; “Our wound is not healed by time, but by justice”; “Where is the justice? One and a half million are still waiting”; “If you are brave, what are you waiting for?”; and “We are not victims, we are the children of a cause that never died”, alongside images depicting the Armenian Genocide and flags of the Armenian Union Party.

During the protest, the Armenian Democratic Youth Movement delivered a statement, read in Arabic by the movement’s co-chair, Lusnak Kafourian. The statement said: “110 years ago, the Ottoman state tried to uproot us from our homeland, erase our identity, and annihilate our people. But they failed, because we are still here, living, resisting, carrying the memory in our blood and the will in our minds.”

The statement emphasized that commemorating the anniversary is a renewal of the pledge not to abandon the cause and the rightful demands, while stressing the necessity of justice and holding all those who contributed to concealing the truth accountable.

The movement concluded its statement with: “Your alliances and projects will collapse in the face of our determination. We are the children of Western Armenia, of Kurdish resistance, and the descendants of Assyria.”