25.09.2023


A delegation headed by Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development, visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial on September 25.

The guests were welcomed by Harutyun Marutyan, AGMI Director, who described the history of the creation of the Memorial complex. He then told the story of the three khachkars placed within the confines of Tsitsernakaberd in memory of the Armenians who died in the massacres organised by the Azerbaijani government in the cities of Sumgait, Kirovabad (Gandzak) and Baku at the end of the 20th century, as well as the biographies of the five freedom fighters buried in front of Memory Wall during the Artsakh struggle for survival, emphasising that contemporary acts of persecution and violence against Armenians were a continuation of the Armenian Genocide.

Samantha Power laid a wreath at the Genocide Monument, after which the accompanying guests laid flowers at the Eternal Fire and observed a minute’s silence in memory of the innocent martyrs of the Armenian Genocide.

Harutyun Marutyan, AGMI Director, then accompanied the guests to the Memory Wall, which contains, in special niches in its reverse side, small containers of soil taken from the graves of a number of 19th and 20th century foreign public figures, politicians, intellectuals and missionaries who raised voices of protest against the massacres and deportations of Armenians carried out by the Turkish government.