An exhibition and musical evening timed to the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide was held in Saint Petersburg at the behest of the CIS Inter- parliamentary Assembly.
According to the Armenian National Assembly press-office, Parliament Vice Speaker Eduard Sharmazanov, CIS Inter-parliamentary Assembly Council Secretary General Aleksey Sergeev, Consul General of Armenia in Saint Petersburg Hrayr Karapetyan, Assistant Secretary of the CIS IPA - representative of Armenia's National Assembly Hayk Chilingaryan attended the event. Speaking at the event, Sharmazanov recalled that in 1944 the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin became the first to use the term 'genocide' when qualifying the massacre of Armenians in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire. A month later, on May 24, he said, the Entente qualified Turkey's actions against the Armenian people as "crime against humanity and civilization."
"Yet 100 years ago, the progressive humanity realized how serious was that crime. Meanwhile, Turkey still denies the Genocide of Armenians. I suppose we must not only condemn the Genocide but also join the progressive humanity in the fight for criminalization of the genocide denial. Only criminalization of denial may close doors to new genocides," Sharmazanov said.