/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The impatience the international community and the Armenian public are waiting with whether the U.S. president use the term Genocide in his annual address to the Armenian community of the United States or not is disrespectful to the memory of Genocide victims, MP Tigran Torosyan, ex-Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia told a news conference in Yerevan.
According to Torosyan, whether Obama will use the Genocide term in his April 24 address is a question of moral image of the U.S and Armenia should not interfere with it.
The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.
To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.
The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.