[Congressional Bills 105th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 148 Introduced in House (IH)]







105th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. CON. RES. 148

    Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the burning of Smyrna and 
  honoring the memory of its civilian victims, and for other purposes.


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                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 9, 1997

Mrs. Maloney of New York (for herself, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. Bilirakis) 
 submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to 
                the Committee on International Relations

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                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION


 
    Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the burning of Smyrna and 
  honoring the memory of its civilian victims, and for other purposes.

Whereas in 1914 the Turkish Nationalist regime initiated a systematic campaign 
        to eradicate the ethnic Greek population in Asia Minor, consigning and 
        killing thousands of male conscripts in forced labor battalions and 
        destroying Greek towns and villages and slaughtering additional hundreds 
        of thousands of civilians in areas where Greeks composed a majority, as 
        on the Black Sea coast, Pontus, and areas around Smyrna;
Whereas in 1922, Smyrna, the largest city in Asia Minor, a cosmopolitan hub 
        populated by a highly educated Greek community and flourishing 
        commercial and middle classes, was sacked and burned and its inhabitants 
        massacred by the Turkish forces of Kemal Attaturk;
Whereas Turkish forces turned on the Greek population, whose numbers had swelled 
        to 400,000 with the influx of refugees from Greek villages destroyed in 
        the countryside, after first slaughtering the Armenians of Smyrna in 
        their quarters;
Whereas on September 9, 1922, Turkish soldiers, led by their officers, set fire 
        to Smyrna and razed most of the city under the gaze of United States, 
        British, and French ships and foreign diplomats and journalists 
        stationed offshore;
Whereas Metropolitan Chrysostomos, the spiritual leader of the Orthodox 
        Christians in Smyrna who refused to abandon the city, was seized from 
        religious services he was conducting in the cathedral by Turkish police 
        forces and given over to be dismembered by a mob in the streets;
Whereas 3 other Orthodox metropolitans were brutally tortured to death in 1921 
        and 1922, as were 37 Armenian clerics and thousands of priests in the 
        broader period from 1894 to 1923;
Whereas in 1923 more than 1,200,000 Greeks were expelled from Turkey; and
Whereas persecutions of Greeks in Turkey were repeated in a pogrom in Istanbul 
        in 1955 whereby Orthodox churches and Greek businesses were burned and 
        vandalized, again in 1964 with the expulsions of Greeks, and continues 
        today with restrictions on press and religious freedoms and harassment 
        of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), 
That--
            (1) the Congress joins the Hellenic and the Armenian 
        American communities in honoring the memory of the victims of 
        Smyrna in 1922 and the millions of Orthodox Christians who 
        perished in the genocidal campaign in Asia Minor from 1894 to 
        1923;
            (2) the United States should encourage the Republic of 
        Turkey to take all appropriate steps to acknowledge these 
        crimes against humanity and commemorate the victims at Smyrna; 
        and
            (3) the American people should never forget these events, 
        and an accurate history thereof should be restored and 
        preserved so that such atrocities may never be repeated.
                                 <all>