April 24, 2010

WHEREAS on April 24, 1915, Ottoman Turkish authorities began the deportation, mass killings and ethnic cleansing of its minority Armenian population resulting in the death of 1.5 million Armenians;

WHEREAS hundreds of thousands of survivors were forced to flee to foreign countries after being stripped of their possessions, their national identities and their homeland; and

WHEREAS in 1915 the United States launched an unprecedented humanitarian effort to save the survivors; and

WHEREAS many Armenian-Americans in Manchester, in New Hampshire and throughout the United States are descendents of these victims; and

WHEREAS the International Court of Transitional Justice, the European Parliament, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide and 20 countries around the world have all reaffirmed the extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish government as genocide; and

WHEREAS in the cause of genocide prevention and education, we must make every effort to confront those that seek to inflict destruction upon mankind and vow to give true meaning to the words ‘never again’;

I, Theodore Gatsas, MAYOR OF MANCHESTER, do hereby proclaim today, April 24, 2010, as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. I urge all citizens to recognize the tragedy that has affected the lives of so many Americans of Armenian descent and further urge citizens to work towards a future where such barbarism is never repeated.

And that this resolution be duly signed by the Mayor of Manchester;

[signed]

Theodore Gatsas, Mayor

Attested to by: [signed]

Matthew P. Normand, City Clerk