Armenians Rally at Consulate to Mark Genocide Anniversary

On the most important day of the year for many Armenians, Viken Sapatjian counted himself among the vocal and the ignored.

“Just once, I’d like to see someone walk out that door and talk to us,” the 22-year-old El Camino College student said, voicing a common frustration among the 500 demonstrators who surrounded the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the 76th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

“But you won’t see that,” he said, “because they’re afraid of the truth.”

Wednesday was a day of worldwide mourning for Armenians, who consider the date to be the anniversary of the start of a campaign by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 to massacre the Armenian minority in Turkey.

In addition to the rally, the occasion was marked locally by a memorial service at a Glendale church and a commemorative program at the Armenian Martyrs’ Monument in a Montebello park.

The consulate, on Wilshire Boulevard, was closed in anticipation of the rally, and consular officials did not even bother to issue a press release disputing the Armenian claims, as they sometimes have in the past. Turkish officials reject the accusation that 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, saying that perhaps 300,000 died as a result of famine and mass deportation, which also killed many Turks during World War I.

Last Saturday, President Bush issued a proclamation to the nation’s one million Armenians--about a third of whom live in Southern California--that avoided using the word “genocide,” but called April 24 a “day of remembrance.” But for Armenian-Americans who lost family members to persecution in Turkey, Wednesday was clearly more than that.

“We want to be remembered, sure, but we also want recognition by the Turkish government that the genocide took place, and also reparations,” said Kourken Khandjran, 63, whose parents escaped Turkey in 1919.

Hribsime Ajamian, 46, offered another reason.

“I do this for my children and my grandchildren; that they never forget, and they never lose hope that justice will be done to us,” Ajamian said.