For the first time yesterday, a sitting U.S. President labelled the 1915 massacre of Armenians as "genocide". In a Statement (full text), President Biden said in part:
Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring. Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination. We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history. And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms....
The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.
NPR reports on the President's statement.
