George Clooney and wife Amal showed their support for the memorial day of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, also known as the Armenian holocaust. The "Up in the Air" actor was accompanied by his 37-year-old human rights lawyer partner in New York on Tuesday for the 100 Lives Initiative.
The 53-year-old went up onstage to speak about the importance of that day. He was joined by Ruben Vardanyan, the co-founder of the said initiative.
"I am honored to be associated with 100 Lives," the Academy Award-winning actor shared, according to PR News Wire, "as it shares a common mission with my foundation, Not On Our Watch, to focus global attention on the impact of genocide as well as putting resources towards ending mass atrocities around the world."
"It should weigh heavily on all of us that genocide still takes place today," the "ER" star continued. "We have to tackle this head on - as individuals, as communities and as governments."
The Armenian Genocide took place from 1915 to 1923 and had claimed about 1.5 million lives. Only 500,000 are said to have survived.
Amal was in the top human rights court in Europe in January to fight against a man who had been convicted of denying the 1915 genocide.
Clooney represented Armenia, which served as part of an appeal that happened before the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg. The court had ruled in favor of the said man, Dogu Perincek in December of 2013.
Perincek had argued that there had been a violation of his right to free speech when he was convicted of racism by Swiss courts when he denied the genocide back in 2005. He had called the Armenian genocide as "an international lie."
Amal, the wife of George Clooney, relayed that the "most important error" of ruling in the favor of Perincek by the court was "it cast doubt on the reality of the Armenian genocide," according to a report by Daily Mail.
Historians say that an estimated 1.5 million Armenians had been killed by the Ottoman Turks during World War I, an event that is widely recognized as the first genocide event to happen in the 20th century by genocide scholars.
Turkey continues to deny that the deaths were a result of a genocide and instead insist that the death toll had been exaggerated and that those who were killed were victims of unrest and the civil war.
Amal and George Clooney got married last year.
