(SPECTATOR) – It has been 109 years since 1.5 million Armenians were deported, starved, or massacred by the Ottoman Empire in a genocide that took the world decades to recognize. They haven’t forgotten.
Last week, thousands of the country’s citizens flooded the streets of Yerevan holding flaming torches to commemorate Genocide Remembrance Day. Meanwhile, the Armenian diaspora met on soccer fields in South America and in churches in Belgium, where the Belgian foreign minister promised them “never again.”
This year, the commemoration is especially salient. Despite the platitudes and promises of foreign leaders, including those in Russia and the United States, the specter of genocide continues to haunt the Armenians. Just months ago, 120,000 Armenians fled Nagorno-Karabakh, a semi-autonomous region of Armenia known to its inhabitants as Artsakh that contains the oldest Christian nation’s oldest churches. Yerevan has called the resulting humanitarian crisis an ethnic cleansing — a predicate for genocide, according to the United Nations.