User blog:Pescavelho/Armenian Genocide Rememberance Day

Today is Armenian Genocide Rememberance Day.

The Armenian Genocide was carried out from 1914 to 1923 and it involved the mass expulsion and killings of ethnic Armenians from Eastern Anatolia, as well as other Christian ethnic groups like Assyrians and Greeks, as the Young Turks' government believed them to be collaborators with the Allies of WW1 and blamed them for the Ottoman Empire's defeat in the First World War.

It is estimated between 1-3 million Armenians died in this genocide.

This is often described as the first modern genocide, even leading to the creation of the word "genocide" (from the Greek, genos, meaning race/people; and the Latin suffix "-caedo" meaning "to kill"), which didn't even exist, or at the very least wasn't as popular, the term was later applied to the Indonesian, Serbian and Holocaust genocides, and retroactively to the killing of Native Americans by European colonizers. Hitler even inspired himself on this genocide when he carried out the Holocaust.

As of 2019, 30 countries recognize the Armenian Genocide (including 49/50 states of the USA) as do most genocide scholars and historians (my country, Portugal, doesn't recognize it, which I find abhorrent). The Republic of Turkey and Republic of Azerbaijan deny the genocide, while the Islamic Republic of Pakistan doesn't recognize Armenia's existance as a country. This is denial of one of the most horrific events in recent human history.

My heart is with everyone whose families and friends were affected by this genocide.