April 24, 2010

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City and County of Denver Proclamation

WHEREAS, The indigenous Armenian people were subject to severe persecution and brutal injustice at the hands of their Ottoman oppressors during the "First Genocide of the Twentieth Century," of the "Forgotten Genocide;" and

WHEREAS, the Armenian Genocide began with the murder of hundreds of Armenians intellectuals and political religious, and business leaders who were arrested and taken from their homes in Constantinople before dawn on April 24, 1915l and WHERAS, each year, Armenians throughout the world honor the 1.5 million who perished from 1915 to 1923, and all the world's people should commemorate the Armenian Genocide and condemn any attempt to deny its historical truth or mischaracterize the episode as anything less than genocide -- the term coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 who referenced the Armenian extermination as a seminal example of genocide; and

WHEREAS, the City and County of Denver join the Armenian-American community in its annual observance of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 - 1923 by encouraging Denverites to visit the Armenian Genocide Memorial Plaque on the northeast grounds of the Colorado State Capital in Denver, est. 1982, and in doing so raise awareness of this unconscionable tragedy so that we may better understand the importance of eliminating hatred in our own communities; and

WHERAS, certified copies of this proclamation be transmitted to the Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States, members of Colorado Congressional delegation, the Senate and Assembly of the State of Colorado, The Armenian Assembly in Washington D.C., and the Armenian and Turkish Embassies in Washington D.C.; and

NOW, THEREFORE I, JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, MAYER of the City and County of Denver, Colorado, by Virtue of the authority vested in me, do hereby officially proclaim April 24, 2010, to also be acknowledged as:

"Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day"

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the official seal of the City and County of Denver to be affixed this twenty-fourth day of April 2010.

John W. Hickenlooper
MAYOR