Recognition of Genocide demanded by Armenian Citizens of Georgia
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Thursday, April 25
As of 2019, governments and parliaments of 30 countries, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, as well as 49 states out of 50 of the United States, have recognized the events as a genocide.
On April 24, Armenians all over the world are recalling the memory of victims of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. All Armenian diaspora - they are mainly descendants of victims of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire - organize events dedicated to memory in every country of the world.
On April 24, 1915, Constantinople began mass arrest and persecution of Armenians, which lasted until September 1918. More than a million Armenians died in three years. About so many Ottoman Empire fled and scattered all over the world. Armenian Genocide recognition is the formal acceptance that the systematic massacres and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923 constituted genocide.
Some governments, including Georgian, have been reticent to officially acknowledge the killings as genocide. Reasons for that are thought to be political concerns about their relations with the Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire. The governments of Turkey and its close ally the Republic of Azerbaijan are the only ones that directly deny the historical factuality of the Armenian Genocide, and both opposed to the recognition of the genocide by other nations, threatening economic and diplomatic consequences to recognizers. Turkey's official position is that the number of Armenian victims was way less and it was caused by civil unrest and not the Ottoman Empire's intentional policy to destroy Armenians.
"Recognize!" - On April 24 of every year, the Armenian population of Samtskhe-Javakheti recalls the massacre with words, posters, flags, and candles. Ethnic Armenian citizens of Georgia are traditionally gathering "stone rocks" and call on the Turkish authorities and other countries to recognize the Armenian tragedy as the genocide of the First World War.
In Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki, the movement started on the evening of April 23 and continued in the morning of April 24. Encell Mkoyan, the majoritarian MP of Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda, says that on this day all the Armenians living in the world say: "April 24th we are crying because millions of Armenians were killed in 1915 and we never forget them, many of the world’s developed countries have recognized the genocide and the list is expanding annually."
Must be also noted, that in 2015, on the 100th anniversary of the genocide Armenian religious and secular organizations in Georgia have petitioned to the country’s parliament. They requested Georgian Parliament to begin formal debates on the recognition of the genocide of the Armenian people from 1915 to 1923. As of today, we can tell that demands were fruitless.
