YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reiterated his case for normalizing Armenia’s “regional relations” on Monday as tens of thousands of people marched to the Tsitsernakaberd memorial in Yerevan to mark the 108th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
The annual daylong procession began with an official wreath-laying ceremony at the hilltop memorial led by Pashinyan, Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan and President Vahagn Khachaturyan.
The country’s political leaders were again not joined by Catholicos Karekin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church at odds with Pashinyan’s government. Karekin and other high-ranking clergymen visited Tsitsernakaberd separately to hold a traditional prayer service by its eternal fire.
The genocide began with mass arrests on April 24, 1915 of Armenian intellectuals and activists in Constantinople. An estimated 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were massacred or starved to death in the following months and years.
“On April 24, we commemorate the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, and tens of thousands of citizens will carry out a procession of respect, remembrance and meditation to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial today.
“The April 24 procession is perhaps the most impactful occurrence that has predetermined and is predetermining our reality, an exceptional day to think about our history, past and future,” Pashinyan said in a statement released on the occasion.
