Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

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24th April each year is Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, also called Armenian Holocaust Memorial Day. It commemorates the 1915-1916 mass killings (estimates of the total numbers who died range from 500,000 to 1,500,000) and deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman (Turkish) Government. Turkey to this day denies that the events which took place during this period amount to genocide.

The reason 24 April was chosen for this commemoration is that this was the date in 1915 when around 250 Armenian Christian intellectuals and community leaders were arrested in Constantinople, which is generally held to be the beginning of the genocide.

In 1967 a memorial was erected in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, and this is the focus of the commemoration. Hundreds of thousands of people converge there every year to lay flowers in memory of the victims of genocide.

There are other memorials around the world including one in Paris, France, which was allegedly bombed by Turks in 1984, a statue in Marseille which was reported stolen on 14 October 2006, while another in Valence, France was desecrated on 15 May 2008. It is believed that these crimes were in response to France's Armenian Genocide denial law.

In the US, North Dakotahass officially recognised 24 APril as Remembrance Day for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide, while in Los Angeles, ceremonies and the laying of flowers at the Montebello Genocide Memorial takes place every year on this date.