UCI student leaders condemn denial of Armenian genocide

The UC Irvine student legislative council on Monday unanimously passed a resolution to commemorate the Armenian genocide and “condemn its denial.”

The measure follows similar resolutions passed at UCLA and other state campuses meant to mark the 100th anniversary of the massacre of about 1.5 million Armenians starting in 1915 amid the chaotic collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Over the years, measures put forward in the U.S. Congress to recognize the killings as genocide have failed in the face of stiff opposition from Turkey.

Turkey acknowledges that many Armenians died in the fighting but denies the widely accepted number and the term genocide, which is nonetheless used by many foreign parliaments and Western historians.

“The cycle of genocide continues with that denial,” said Carla Kekejian, a UCI junior and one of three students who petitioned for the resolution.

The resolution calls on the campus to set April 24 as the official day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide. It also “condemns those attempts made by governments as well as other entities, both public and private, to distort the historical reality and legal relevance of the Armenian genocide to the descendants of its survivors and humanity as a whole.”

“When we put in writing like that,” Kekejian said, “it ensures that every year it is going to be remembered and commemorated on campus.”