The House of Representatives of Cyprus on Thursday evening observed a minute’s silence for the victims of the Armenian Genocide, with the body pledging to “fight for a world where peace and justice prevail and where the atrocities of the past never happen again,” reports CyprusMail.

In his remarks, acting House President Zacharias Koulias noted that April 24 marks the “black anniversary” of the Armenian Genocide.

Over the span of several years, he noted, millions of Armenians were “violently displaced, subjected to hardship and massacred, in a relentless attempt at extinguishing their existence.”

Also, Koulias recalled that the Republic of Cyprus was the second nation in the world to recognize the Armenian Genocide, in 1975.