Hellenic President Konstantinos  Tasoulas urges international recognition of Pontic Genocide on remembrance day

President Konstantinos Tasoulas of the Hellenic Republic on Monday marked the anniversary of the Pontic Genocide – the massacre of ethnic Greeks by Ottoman forces during World War I and the subsequent Greek-Turkish War – calling for the international recognition of the atrocity.

Greece officially recognised the killing of up to 370,000 Greeks living along the Black Sea coast between 1914 and 1923 as genocide in 1994, designating 19 May as an annual day of remembrance.

“We honour with reverence the hundreds of thousands of victims who were persecuted, slaughtered, uprooted from their ancestral homes, and annihilated during the death marches through Anatolia under the Ottoman Empire,” Tasoulas said.

“The international recognition of the genocide of the Pontic Greeks is the least tribute we can pay to those lost lives – and a meaningful contribution to the global effort to prevent such heinous crimes from ever happening again.”

He added: “It is our collective duty to keep alive the memory of the tragic victims of this atrocity.”

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, along with opposition parties, also issued statements to commemorate the anniversary.

Source: ekathimerini.com