March for Humanity and more

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Here is more info about the above event:

Los Angeles, CA February 14, 2005 — California youth will walk from Fresno Calif. to the State Capitol starting on April 2, 2005. The 215-mile 19-day journey, titled March for Humanity, aims to raise awareness about the unpunished crime of genocide committed against the Armenian people between 1915 and 1921.

“Ninety years ago innocent Armenians also marched, but not willingly, not just 215 miles, and not just 19 days,” said Serouj Aprahamian, March for Humanity Coordinator. “They were forced to death marches across deserts - hundreds of miles for months with no food or water, left to starve and die in a premeditated act of genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks. This April we will pay tribute to the 1.5 million lives lost during the Armenian Genocide by marching in their memory and the memory of all those who have been victims of genocides. From the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust, from the Cambodian genocide to the hell of the Rwandan Genocide, our generation has an obligation to stand against genocide and its denial."

Upon arriving in Sacramento, march participants, human rights activists, and Armenian American community members will gather at the State Capitol for a rally organized to thank the California State Legislature and 36 other states’ legislatures for officially recognizing the Genocide. The rally will also promote public involvement in securing justice not only for the Armenian Genocide, but also for all unpunished crimes against humanity.

“To avoid accountability for the murder of 1.5 million Armenians, the Turkish government denies that the systematic annihilation of the Armenians was genocide,” said Vicken Sosikian, director of the March for Humanity. “We turn to our nation’s leaders, President Bush and the U.S. Congress, in the name of truth, righteousness, and justice, ask him to condemn the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by holding the government of Turkey accountable for this crime against humanity.”

Organizers are expecting hundreds of supporters and activists from across the country and Canada to join the March for Humanity. Participants will sleep in community centers, churches, schools and in tents on the road side. They will walk, rain or shine, for about 15 miles each day.

Raffi Maronian, a participant who will walk the entire 215 mile distance, is confident that the march will open people’s eyes up to the threat genocide poses for all of humanity. “Those of us who are familiar with the genocide carried out against the Armenians bear a special responsibility to make sure the lessons of such crimes are never again repeated. The recent events in Sudan serve to demonstrate that we have not done an adequate job. It’s time to raise our level of activism and put an end to the cycle of genocide,” said Maronian.