[Congressional Bills 106th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 596 Reported in House (RH)]
House Calendar No. 296
106th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 596
[Report No. 106-933]
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
September 27, 2000
Mr. Radanovich submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on International Relations
October 4, 2000
Additional sponsor: Mr. Bonior
October 4, 2000
Reported with an amendment, referred to the House Calendar, and ordered
to be printed
[Strike out all after the resolving clause and insert the part printed
in italic]
[For text of introduced resolution, see copy of resolution as
introduced on September 27, 2000]
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This resolution may be cited as the ``Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The House of Representatives finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by
the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the
deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000
men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were
expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the
elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in
their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France,
and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for
the first time ever another government of committing ``a crime
against humanity''.
(3) This joint statement stated ``[i]n view of these new
crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied
Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they
will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members
of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who
are implicated in such massacres''.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the
top leaders involved in the ``organization and execution'' of
the Armenian Genocide and in the ``massacre and destruction of
the Armenians''.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young
Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for
organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister
of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of
the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes,
however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial
failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the
national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other
countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same
facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record
Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on
the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record
Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00
and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public
and interested institutions.
(9) The national archives of Turkey should also include all
of the records pertaining to the indictment, trial, and
conviction of the Ottoman authorities responsible for the
Armenian Genocide.
(10) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized
and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the
allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(11) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the
United States Department of State the policy of the Government
of the Ottoman Empire as ``a campaign of race extermination'',
and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary
of State Robert Lansing that the ``Department approves your
procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution''.
(12) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916,
resolved that ``the President of the United States be
respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of
this country may give expression to their sympathy by
contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the
Armenians'', who at the time were enduring ``starvation, disease, and
untold suffering''.
(13) President Wilson concurred and also encouraged the
formation of the organization known as Near East Relief,
chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some
$116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid the Armenian Genocide
survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children
of the American people.
(14) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in
part, ``the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the
sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have
clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and
other atrocities from which the Armenian people have
suffered''.
(15) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to
the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by
General James Harbord, that stated ``[m]utilation, violation,
torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a
hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that
region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal
crime of all the ages''.
(16) Setting the stage for the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, on
ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without
provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying ``[w]ho,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?''.
(17) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ``genocide'' in
1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the Genocide
Convention, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example
of genocide in the 20th century.
(18) Raphael Lemkin described the crime as ``the systematic
destruction of whole national, racial or religious groups. The
sort of thing Hitler did to the Jews and the Turks did to the
Armenians''.
(19) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United
Nations at Lemkin's urging, the December 11, 1946, United
Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United
Nations Genocide Convention itself recognized the Armenian
Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to
prevent by codifying existing standards.
(20) In 1948 the United Nations War Crimes Commission
invoked the Armenian Genocide ``precisely . . . one of the
types of acts which the modern term `crimes against humanity'
is intended to cover'' as a precedent for the Nuremberg
tribunals.
(21) The Commission stated that ``[t]he provisions of
Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously
intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 .
. ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory
against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or
Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for
Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and
offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes against
humanity' as understood by these enactments''.
(22) The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted
in 1985 a report entitled ``Study of the Question of the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide'', which
stated ``[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the
only case of genocide in the twentieth century. Among other
examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman
massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916''.
(23) This report also explained that ``[a]t least 1
million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian
population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death
marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is
corroborated by reports in United States, German and British
archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire,
including those of its ally Germany''.
(24) The tragedy of the Armenian Genocide has been
acknowledged by countries and international bodies such as
Argentina, Belgium, Canada, the Council of Europe, Cyprus, the
European Parliament, France, Great Britain, Greece, Lebanon,
Russia, the United Nations, the United States, and Uruguay.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an
independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30,
1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would
include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done
so.
(26) President Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated
April 22, 1981, stated in part ``like the genocide of the
Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which
followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many
other people--the lessons of the holocaust must never be
forgotten''.
(27) President Bush, in 1988, speaking of the Armenian
Genocide, stated ``we must consciously and conscientiously
recognize the genocides of the past--the enormous tragedies that have
darkened this century and that haunt us still. We must not only
commemorate the courage of the victims and of their survivors, but we
must also remind ourselves that civilization cannot be taken for
granted. . . . We must all be vigilant against this most heinous crime
against humanity''.
(28) President Bush, in 1988, stated further ``[t]he United
States must acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian
people in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, based on the
testimony of survivors, scholars, and indeed our own
representatives at the time, if we are to insure that such
horrors are not repeated''.
(29) President Clinton, on August 13, 1992, stated ``[t]he
Genocide of 1915, years of communist dictatorship, and the
devastating earthquake of 1988 have caused great suffering in
Armenia during this century''.
(30) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later
retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting
that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in
1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy
record of the United States, noted that the assertion on
ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian
Genocide ``contradicted longstanding United States policy and
was eventually retracted''.
(31) Despite the international recognition and affirmation
of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and
international authorities to punish those responsible for the
Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have
recurred and may recur in the future, and that a proper
judicial and firm response, holding the guilty accountable and
requiring the prompt enforcement of verdicts would have spared
humanity needless suffering.
(32) In a commendable letter on April 9, 1999, Ambassador
Stuart Eizenstat, then Under Secretary of State for Economic,
Business, and Agricultural Affairs, pledged that the
administration would raise with the Republic of Turkey the
issue of the recovery of Armenian assets from the genocide
period held by the Imperial Ottoman Bank.
(33) It is important that the President ensure that the
foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate
understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to
human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the
United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the
consequences of the failure to enforce the judgments of the
Turkish courts against the responsible officials.
SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.
The House of Representatives--
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign
policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding
and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights,
ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States
record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences
of the failure to enforce the judgments of the Turkish courts
against the responsible officials;
(2) calls upon the President in the President's annual
message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about
April 24 to characterize the systematic and deliberate
annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall
the proud history of United States intervention in opposition
to the Armenian Genocide; and
(3) calls upon the President in the President's annual
message commemorating the Armenian Genocide to state that the
modern day Republic of Turkey did not conduct the Armenian
Genocide, which was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire.
House Calendar No. 296
106th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 596
[Report No. 106-933]
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
October 4, 2000
Reported with an amendment, referred to the House Calendar, and ordered
to be printed