PARK LA BREA NEWS-Protesters from the Los Angeles Armenian community crowded the sidewalk and spilled into the street outside the Turkish Consulate for more than two hours to commemorate the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915 at the hands of the former Ottoman Empire.
Chants of “Fight, fight to the end” (in Armenian) echoed off the walls of the consulate building at the corner of Wilshire and Crescent Heights boulevards, as protesters waved signs with slogans calling for Turkish acknowledgment of genocide. Passing motorists, many with Armenian flags adorning their vehicles, honked their horns.
A large banner emblazoned with a gagged Statue of Liberty hung from a building across the street, proclaiming “End Turkey’s gag rule.”
Organizers said about 5,000 people showed up at the consulate protest, while Los Angeles Police Department officials said the number was closer to 1,200.
Armenians and scores of historians say the killings were genocide, though Turkey’s government rejects the term.
The march drew myriad young people, many wearing T-shirts from the Armenian Youth Federation, an organizer of the protest. (Click here for the rest of this Park LaBrea News report)
-cw
