Keeping with her promise to open up city hall to the city’s many and numerous minorities, Mayor Judith Flanagan-Kennedy last week took part in raising the Armenian Flag in front of Lynn City Hall.
Last week’s flag raising was especially symbolic as this week marks the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
The Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Turks was the first great European genocide of the 20th Century, followed of course by the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
“I was especially proud to raise the Armenian Flag,” said the mayor.
Armenians have suffered in the past and then came back to make many contributions to American society.
Lynn has a small but vibrant Armenian community which has lived here since the great days of immigration to America after the genocide.
The genocide is commemorated on April 24 because on that night in 1915, the Turkish government placed under arrest 200 Armenian community leaders in Constantinople. Hundreds more were apprehended after that. They were all sent to prison in Anatolia where they were executed, almost to a person.
Thus began the systematic arrest, deportation and excution of Turkey’s large Armenian population.
It is estimated that between 1915 and 1923 approximately 1.5 million Armenians were deported and executed in one of the most bloodthirsty genocides to have taken place.
Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to Turkish responsibility for the genocide, the Turks have refused to admit their complicity.
There is presently a bill in the Congress set to be debated acknowledging the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.
The Turks have threatened retaliation if the bill passes.
Russia and about 15 other European nations including France have already noted Turkish complicity as the cause of the genocide.