President Joe Biden on Saturday became the first U.S. leader in decades to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide.
April 24 (UPI) — President Joe Biden on Saturday became the first U.S. leader in decades to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide. He used the language in a statement to mark Armenian Remembrance Day. Saturday was the 106th anniversary of the start of the genocide, in which Ottoman authorities rounded up, and deported or killed more than 1 million Armenians. “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,” Biden said. “We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history,” Biden said, using the Armenian term for the genocide. “And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.” The use of the term “genocide” in Biden’s statement is likely to cause tension between his administration and Turkey, which denies that it mistreated Armenians.
