Just to give some facts. again. and these are simple. documented facts. on April 24 of 1915 some 200 Armenian religious. political. and intellectual leadera from Constantinople or Istanbul were arrested and exiled in one fell swoop. silencing the leading representatives of the Armenian community in the Ottoman capital. This was the symbolic beginning of the genocide. the occasion we commemorate tonight. But over the years from 181$ to 182. as the gentleman mentioned. there were over 1.5 million men. women and children were deported. forced into slave labor. tortured and exterminated by the government of the Young Turk Committee. The deportations and killings finally ended with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 192. although efforts to erase all traces of the Armenian presence In the area continued. After years of imprisonment. slave labor. ants of torture and L5 million murders. the Turks tried to erase the evidence of the Armenian presence in the region by changing place names and destroying Armenian culture and religious monuments. But this entire shameful and appalling period of history meets every definition of the term "genocide." Turkey has to come to terms with Its past.
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deportations deported