Joe Biden commemorated the Armenian Genocide on its 107th anniversary and called for “stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars around the world”

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden commemorated the 107th anniversary of the “Armenian genocide”, an episode he described as a “campaign of extermination.”

Biden issued a statement honoring the memory of the 1.5 million Armenians “who were deported, massacred or forced to march to death during this extermination campaign.”

The statement does not mention the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Biden has also described as genocide. Even so, he used the date to set the principles of US foreign policy, at a time when various countries send arms to Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia.

“We resume our commitment to remain vigilant against the corrosive effects of hatred in all its forms,” the president said. “We resume our commitment to raising our voices and stopping atrocities that leave lasting scars around the world,” he added.

In 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested Armenian intellectuals and leaders in Constantinople, now Istanbul. Biden's statement highlights that that event on April 24 marked the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

Last year, fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden used the term “genocide” for the first time to commemorate the event. In the past, the United States refused to use the word so as not to offend Turkey, which is a member of NATO.

In Armenia, political forces have commemorated the anniversary with a call for recognition of the genocide and historical memory. “We are convinced that if people had condemned the Armenian Genocide in time, more cases would have been avoided,” the country's president, Vahagn Khachaturyan, lamented in statements collected by Armen Press.

Scandal in Uruguay

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu unleashed a national and international scandal in Uruguay after being recorded making a gesture related to a Turkish ultra-nationalist group to a group of Armenian protesters protesting his visit. The reprehensible episode occurred at the start of the inauguration of the Turkish Embassy in Uruguay, in the Matriz Square in Montevideo, when Çavuşoğlu, who held a meeting last Saturday with his Uruguayan counterpart, Francisco Bustillo, passed his official vehicle in front of the activists.

As can be seen in the video released by the Armenian Council group of Uruguay, the Turkish Foreign Minister made the signal of the ultra-right and ultra-nationalist Turkish organization the Grey Wolves with his hand. This paramilitary organization denies the existence of the Armenian genocide and was banned in 2020 by European countries such as Austria and France following attacks by its members against the local Armenian community.

(with information from AP and EP)

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