LOS ANGELES – The red, blue and orange of the Armenian flag waved in the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday as protesters remembered the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in what is considered the first genocide of the 20th century.

A crowd rallied in the Little Armenia district of Los Angeles before continuing down Hollywood Boulevard. Another march was planned, culminating in a protest in front of the consulate of Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which oversaw mass deportations and massacres of Armenians.

The large Armenian community in the Los Angeles area has been celebrating Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day since long before President Joe Biden in 2021 became the first U.S. president to use the word “genocide” to describe the campaign. of violence.

The White House had avoided using the term for fear of alienating Turkey, a NATO ally that denies genocide.

Biden repeated the term Wednesday in a statement recounting the beginning of the “campaign of cruelty” on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders.