Armenian Genocide

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1943, firstly from the Latin "gens, gentis," meaning "tribe, clan, or race," or the Greek root génos (γένος) (family, tribe or race - gene); secondly from Latin -cide (occido—to massacre, kill).

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

When we hear of a genocide, we imagine something horrifying, imagine annihilation, pain, suffering...But think how much worse that pain becomes when the genocide is officially denied, unrecognized and forgotten.
At the turn of the 20th century when the world was engaged in World War I, the government of Young Turks in Turkey planned and realized the first genocide of the 20th century. In the period of 1915-1923 more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred in Eastern Anatolia or what was the historical Western Armenia.
The Armenian Genocide was carefully organized and realized by the government. First, Armenian males were called to the army. They were then disarmed and sent to the labor camps where they were finally massacred in the most horrifying ways. Then in the spring of 1915 the Armenian population was ordered deported from their homes. Convoys consisting of tens of thousands of Armenian women, children and the elderly were driven hundreds of miles toward the Syrian desert of Der-Zor. The deportations were disguised as a resettlement program but their main objective was not to let a single Armenian alive. On their ways, Armenians had to deal with starvation, diseases, outraged army soldiers and even local population who were told by their religious leaders that it is ok to kill Armenians, it is the way to heaven. The convoys were frequently attacked by bands of criminals organized by the government for the purpose of slaughtering the Armenians. Those who survived the long “journey” to Der-Zor were killed in the desert when they reached it. All this demonstrates the genocidal intent of the “deportations”. Many of the survivors went insane seeing their families die in the most horrifying ways. A number of younger women and some orphaned children were also abducted and placed in Muslim harems which was even worse than death for the Christian Armenians.
“Through methodically organized deportation, systematic massacre, deliberate starvation and dehydration, and continuous brutalization, the Ottoman government reduced its Armenian population to a frightened mass of famished individuals whose families and communities had been destroyed in a single stroke.”
Despite the vast amount of evidence today the Turkish government consistently denies the fact that this was genocide. Many countries in the world still haven’t recognized the Armenian Genocide either. Though forty US states have officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, the United States doesn’t recognize the Armenian genocide because of its military and economic interests in Turkey. The Turkish government even threatens the countries that want to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
April 24th is the Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide.
Armenians want to show the world how cruel the genocide is, and FORGETTING PAST CRIMES WE RISK TO SEE THEM REPEATED IN THE FUTURE.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org