French Insurance Compensates Descendents of Armenian Genocide Victims

French insurance company Axa has reportedly provided life insurance premiums to descendants of Armenians killed during a 1915 bloody crackdown on ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, Armtown news agency reported on March 10.

Hilda Tchobian, head of the European Armenian Federation, stated that the company had agreed to compensate some 1,000 families, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported. Tchobian claimed that Axa had started mailing $10,000 checks to the descendants of slain Armenians.

Thousands of Armenian Diaspora families in Armenia, the US and France sought compensation through Ottoman-era insurance policies, Panarmenian news agency wrote. The policies had been bought from companies that were later absorbed by France's Axa insurance firm.

France is among the 21 countries that designate Ottoman Turkey's massacre of thousands of ethnic Armenians as genocide. The United States' House of Representatives' Committee on Foreign Relations voted on March 4 to submit for debate a non-binding resolution on recognition of the genocide, but the measure faces an uncertain future.