Feature: Syrian Armenians mark "genocide" anniversary

Despite the tough situation in the unrest-torn Syria, the Armenian community there says nothing will make them forget a genocide against the Armenians a hundred years ago.

"We will not forget," was a phrase written in Arabic and Armenian on small tags distributed to hundreds of Armenians, who took part in a prayer held in one of their churches in the Bab Sharqi neighborhood in the capital Damascus Friday.

Lighting candles and reciting their prayers, the Armenian community in Syria marked the slaughter and expulsion of their ancestors a century ago by the hand of the Ottomans.

The prayers were also followed by a church scout parade, where participants bang drums and played sad tunes.

"No matter how long it's going to take, we will keep asking for our rights from Turkey and we will also keep demanding our territories in western Turkey," Sosi Khajalian, a 50-year-old Armenian woman, told Xinhua.

She said her ancestors were residents in the western Armenia which is now part of Turkey.

On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, poets, diplomats and leading figures in Istanbul and slaughtered them due to growing unrest at that time. Armenia and the Armenians in the diaspora placed the number of their slain forefathers by the hands of the Ottomans at 1.5 million.

The Armenians have been pushing for Turkey to acknowledge the genocide. However, Turkish officials acknowledged the death of large numbers of Armenians but said the overall death toll was exaggerated and the deaths occurred in the civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Turks were also killed.

Levan Abajian, a 22-year old Armenian man, said he will keep telling Turkey that "your ancestors were the ones who had slaughtered us," drawing a parallel between the genocide a century ago and the current events in Syria, which the Syrian government is blaming big parts of it on Turkey's alleged support to the radical militants fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad and minority groups in the war-torn country.

"We would like to tell Turkey that your ancestors were the ones who had slaughtered us and the Turkish government nowadays is taking part in the war against the Syrians. We will keep demanding our rights and territories from Turkey," he added.

Ahead of the crisis in Syria and during the first months of it, around 100,000 Armenians lived mostly in Syria's northern city of Aleppo and about 7,000 others in Damascus.

Later on, thousands returned to Armenia and others chose to flee to neighboring Lebanon, where 10,000 Armenians are believed to have sought refuge in predominantly Armenian districts in the capital Beirut.

Lertad Karajian, an Armenian pastor, told Xinhua that this year's anniversary has a special mark, as the Armenian Church on Thursday conferred the sainthood on the massacred 1.5 million Armenians.

"Today we are happy as the world is growingly recognizing the Armenian genocide. We are glad that the international conscious woke up after 100 years of the massacre. Today we are extremely happy over what we consider the big win. Again, we are demanding our full rights and God willing the entire world will see that the wronged and oppressed people will eventually win," he said.

Reports said the Turkish government is becoming increasingly alarmed that there is a growing momentum to recognize the killings of Armenians as "genocide."

German President Joachim Gauck on Thursday recognized the mass killing of Armenians as a "genocide" ahead of Friday's centennial commemoration of the event.

Syria expressed Thursday at a global forum its condemnation of the genocide.

"Any crime against humans must be condemned and rejected whoever the perpetrator," speaker of the Syrian parliament, Jihad al-Laham, told the global forum "Against the Crime of Genocide," which was held in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

"History will not forgive those who didn't learn the lessons of wars on other peoples," he said, hinting at the role of Turkey in the Syrian crisis.

Al-Laham drew parallels between the Armenian genocide and the "mass crimes" targeting the people in Syria and Iraq, saying the crimes "systematically committed by the terrorists in both countries target all of the two peoples' components and are aimed at cleansing areas of their inhabitants," according to the state news agency SANA. Endit