Artak Zakaryan delivered a speech during the discussion of the Resolution proposed on the Armenian Genocide Centennial.
“Dear Colleagues,
The Armenian people have always hailed every opportunity related to the discussion of the resolution on the Armenian Genocide.
The main goal of this resolution is the condemnation and prevention of crimes against European values, human rights and crimes against humanity.
We all realize that every crime of Genocide was not initiated and completed in one day, and it ends only when the perpetrator of the crime recognizes the committed crime for prevention of the further crimes.
Modern Turkey as a successor of Ottoman Turkey should put an end to the first Genocide of the 20th century by refusing from unsuccessful attempts of editing its own history.
The Armenian Genocide Centennial is not an endpoint. It is a new start of a struggle which now we have in the world for the recognition and condemnation of old genocides and prevention of new ones.
The Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the genocides of Assyrians, Greeks and other populations of Asia Minor, as well as the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur and other acts of genocide worth to be condemned by the civilized humanity.
Here, I would like to remind Hitler's words before the execution of his cruel intention “Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?”
Also, just on the base of the facts of the first Genocide of the 20th century the greatest humanist and scholar Raphael Lemkin proposed the term “Genocide”.
Dear Colleagues,
The adoption of the proposed resolution will be our contribution to the recognition and condemnation of crimes of genocide will reflect the memory of the world about the martyrs, lost legacy and about the need to recover it.
So, for the approval of the abovementioned, I propose through this resolution to herald a new viewpoint for the restoration of justice, to get equipped with new means for struggle against denialism, and be compassionate and united to the struggle of the nations, who survived the Genocide. The history has proved many times that the guarantee for victory and restoration of justice is contained in solidarity.”