Honorable Madam President, dear colleagues,
As every year, this year we remember the tragic events of the Armenian Genocide, the first great genocide of the turbulent 20th century. At the same time, we commemorate the more than 1,500,000 innocent Armenian martyrs, who between 1915-1923 were massacred, murdered or deported and led on forced death marches in the inhospitable desert of Der Zor in present-day Syria. In addition, at least 95,000 Armenians were Islamised, with the result that today their descendants are unaware of their origins.
Along with the physical extermination of the "Giauri" Armenians, the Turks also committed cultural genocide in order to eliminate the long-standing Armenian presence in Asia Minor, Pontus, Western Armenia and Cilicia, where between 1894 and 1923, a total of 450 monasteries, 1.950 schools and 2,430 churches were snatched and destroyed or changed use, while the names of some 4,000 towns and villages were deserted.
The 800,000 surviving refugees scattered across the globe, forming the Armenian Diaspora. Haunted by the horrific memories of the great catastrophe, they built new lives, contributing to the commerce, sports, scouting, sciences, arts and culture of their adopted homelands.
One of these new homelands was our small Cyprus, which opened its arms wide and welcomed more than 9,000 Armenian refugees who arrived in Larnaca and its other ports, including my own family. With effort and toil, the 1,300 who finally remained managed to get back on their feet and continue the good name that Armenians have always had on our island for centuries.
Cyprus has always been a constant supporter of Armenians and Armenia. In 1975, it became the second country in the world and the first in Europe to recognize the Armenian Genocide, with Resolution 36 passed by the House of Representatives on this floor, and in 2015, it criminalized its denial. Its practical and moral support is continuous and uninterrupted, and at the state level the two countries cooperate flawlessly in trade and geostrategic areas. Once again, I feel the need to thank all the governments of the Republic of Cyprus for the above. Unfortunately, the powerful of the Earth have always been content with statements of condemnation, leaving the weak at the mercy of the invader's appetites and eternal victims of their interests.
The global mobilisation of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is striking, while public opinion has been indifferent to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and more recently, the violations of the buffer zone in Cyprus and the violation of the status quo in Famagusta by the Turks, the war in Artsakh and the ongoing violation of Armenia's borders by the Azeris.
The international community should finally stop pretending to act on the basis of economic and geostrategic interests and assume the role of the guardian of international law, putting words into practice, as the poet Homer wrote in the Iliad.
Thank you.
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