Question: I would like to know about the main parts of the visit to Rwanda.

Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: You know Armenia and Rwanda, I think, have a very enormous potential for working together for the two countries, for the two peoples. We have a shared history of tragedy and the experience of overcoming and defeating that burden of loss and the burden of enormous crime. We are working with Rwanda together on the Genocide prevention at the international level. From our experience, the experience of our peoples, we know that if you do not address that problem, do not fight this crime, it will haunt generations. It haunts the generations of our people, because the depth of the tragedy is despicable.

So we need to act together and we need to work together, and we Armenia and Rwanda are great contributors, important contributors to the international effort to prevent genocides, to prevent mass atrocities, to prevent crimes against humanity. We are very keen to work together, continue working together. Also we are countries which have an enormous potential and an enormous record of development and I think we have many commonalities in this. We have our experience in which smart development takes a hint in a way in which we try to expand and  strengthen the wealth of the people, the development of our country. We have been seeing how interesting the development in Rwanda is taking place and the way in which you are putting an emphasis on smart development. Your country and the President of Rwanda is in lead of initiating Smart Africa center and smart development in Africa.

This generates an enormous interest. We do a lot in Armenia on this. We have a very big and very important development on high tech, innovation, smart solutions, IT solutions and creative education, giving the young generation the opportunity to untap their potential and their talent. We have generated many interesting examples and experience. And you have your experience. We are very keen to build good cooperation between the two nations especially in this field. There are many other areas in which we can cooperate and we are very keen to do that as well. My visit is very full of important and interesting meetings, I have just had a meeting in the parliament with the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers. We had an interesting discussion and we are very keen with the rest of my program. It will include both: part of the program will be about discussing the way in which we work in human rights field, and in the field of preventing genocides and mass atrocities.

My visit also will be focusing on the cooperation for development for the people of Armenia and the people of Rwanda. And of course, a very important part of my visit is  about April 7th. I came here on behalf of the people and the Government of Armenia which stand in solidarity with the Government and the people of Rwanda to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Genocide on the April 7th. This is of course the absolute mark of the visit. The dates of the visit were particularly focused on April 7th. So this is why I am here for and I hope that we have already put record of working together. We are members of La Francophonie.

We were very happy to welcome Francophonie family in Armenia in October, at the Summit of Yerevan. This is an important platform, a very useful platform of cooperation, with a very strong potential. It was a platform which also brought our people and our countries together.  And we were very glad that we could work together with the Secretary General, the new Secretary General whose election took place in Yerevan during the Summit, my good friend and a wonderful person Madame Louise Mushikiwabo. We value friendship between our peoples and we are very keen to discuss the various platforms of cooperation that we can utilize for Rwanda and for Armenia bilaterally, through multilateral platforms.

La Francophonie is such a platform. I also believe that other multilateral platforms: the United Nations, the African Union, the Eurasian Economic Union, other platforms in which we are members, the platforms of integration will strengthen the bilateral cooperation between Armenia and Rwanda. And I am a strong believer, a very strong believer in huge potential that Armenia and Rwanda have. Working together towards the empowerment and development of our nations and our people. I am very keen on that.

Question: Thank you. But there are various figures, which are released talking about how many people were killed during the Genocide of the Armenians. Some say it’s 1.5 million, others say it’s 800 thousand to 1.8 million. We’d like to know what is the actual figure and when did the genocide happen.

Zohrab Mnatsakanyan: The Armenian Genocide of 1915 there was a premeditated plan by the Ottoman Empire of the extermination of a whole nation on the grounds of their national identity. It was the case, which was examined by the scholars and lawyers. Specifically the founder and the author of the genocide convention, Raphael Lemkin has spent all his career examining this phenomenon understanding why these things happen and later coming up with the term genocide. He made a legal point of it. The legal term genocide was developed and the international community adopted the convention on genocide in 1948 and the Armenian genocide very much the source of examination of why and how these things can happen.

What is most disturbing? There are several. First of all, we fail to recognize that crime. We fail to recognize the damage of the generations when justice is denied. There are over five generations now who are the survivors or the descendants of the survivors. We have seen the depth of the calamity that genocide brings. It happened to the Armenians, followed by Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide.

Everytime we stand in the international community and say "never again", but it is not enough. We ask ourselves the question: are we serious, is it enough, have we been paying attention to the signs of genocidal tendencies which can be detected early. Have we been acting early to prevent, or we just let it go to face the calamity.

This is a very important and very difficult lessons that we all have to learn. We believe the signs can be seen. It is an obligation for the nations, first of all, the governments and the international community to react collectively to early signs and never to let it come to a point when the whole system breaks. We Armenians are still denied the recognition of Genocide.

We consider ourselves victors because we were supposed to be wiped out of the face of this Earth. But today we are confident people, proud and strong about their identity, their history and their civilization with thriving communities all over the world, a nation state, a country. And this is our answer to what meant to be a total extermination. The other important thing is that denied genocide, denial to recognize genocide, denialism is very painful which haunts generations.