PRESS RELEASE                                                      
October 24, 2007

Washington Post Publishes Reply from Ambassador of Armenia

On October 24, The Washington Post published a letter from Ambassador Tatoul Markarian in response to an October 15 column by Fred Hiatt. In his article, Hiatt suggested that the Armenian-American community should have worked hard to promote democracy and human rights in Armenia instead of the Genocide recognition.

In his letter to the editor, Ambassador Markarian said that such claims lead the debate over recognition of the Armenian genocide in the wrong direction. The difficulties that Armenia has encountered during its successful democratic and economic transition are not taboo subjects for genuine discussion, the Ambassador stated. And members of our Diaspora have always provided economic assistance and been actively involved in issues such as the environment, civil and political liberties, and security concerns. But this activism has not come at the expense of the quest for genocide recognition, a moral duty for all Armenians and all of humanity. In addition, the Turkish state's denial of the Armenian genocide translates into its continuing refusal to normalize relations with Armenia, leading us to believe that our only choice is to pursue both historical and contemporary justice internationally, noted the Ambassador.

The Ambassador stated that the fact that Armenia's democratic transition is not yet complete should not prevent Armenia from condemning crimes against humanity, especially a genocide that killed 1.5 million of our ancestors, took their historical homeland and destroyed a millenniums-old culture. The suggestion that Armenia’s routine transition problems and the genocide carried out by Ottoman Turkey can be weighed on the same scale is ill-founded, to say the least, concluded the letter from the Ambassador of Armenia.