[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 316 Introduced in House (IH)]






109th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 316

  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

                             June 14, 2005

Mr. Radanovich (for himself, Mr. Knollenberg, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Pallone, 
Mr. Dreier, Mr. Weiner, Mr. Saxton, Mr. Levin, Mr. Souder, Ms. Watson, 
 Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, Mr. McNulty, Mrs. Miller of Michigan, Mr. 
   Schwarz of Michigan, Mr. Cardoza, Mr. Costello, Mr. Crowley, Mr. 
  McCotter, Mr. Israel, Mrs. Napolitano, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Kirk, Mr. 
Filner, Mr. Sherman, Ms. Eshoo, Mr. Rogers of Michigan, Mr. McKeon, Mr. 
McGovern, Mr. Meehan, Mr. Visclosky, Mr. Bradley of New Hampshire, Mr. 
 Bass, Mr. Berman, Mr. Nunes, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. 
    Shimkus, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Hinchey, Mr. Sweeney, Mr. Costa, Mr. 
  McDermott, Mr. Menendez, Ms. Roybal-Allard, Mr. Issa, Mr. Frank of 
 Massachusetts, Mr. Langevin, Mr. Bilirakis, Mr. Foley, Mr. Kennedy of 
  Rhode Island, Mr. Rothman, Mr. Smith of New Jersey, and Mr. Royce) 
submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee 
                       on International Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               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 ``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 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.
            (10) 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''.
            (11) 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''.
            (12) President Woodrow 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 Armenian Genocide 
        survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children 
        of the American people.
            (13) 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''.
            (14) 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''.
            (15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial 
        Museum, 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?'' and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
            (16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ``genocide'' in 
        1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations 
        Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, 
        invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide 
        in the 20th century.
            (17) 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 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide 
        itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime 
        the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying 
        existing standards.
            (18) 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.
            (19) 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''.
            (20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, 
        resolved: ``[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as 
        `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', and 
        the President of the United States is authorized and requested 
        to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United 
        States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the 
        victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry . . 
        .''.
            (21) President Ronald 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''.
            (22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 
        1984, resolved: ``[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated 
        as `National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man', 
        and the President of the United States is authorized and 
        requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of 
        the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance 
        for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-
        half million people of Armenian ancestry . . . ''.
            (23) In August 1985, after extensive study and 
        deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of 
        Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to 
        accept 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 20th century. Among other examples 
        which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre 
        of Armenians in 1915-1916''.
            (24) This report also explained that ``[a]t least 
        1,000,000, 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.''.
            (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) 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''.
            (27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted 
        an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export 
        Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to 
        reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment 
        of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish 
        Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to 
        honor the memory of its victims.
            (28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 
        1998, stated: ``This year, as in the past, we join with 
        Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one 
        of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the 
        deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in 
        the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.''.
            (29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: 
        ``On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most 
        horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as 
        many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at 
        the end of the Ottoman Empire.''.
            (30) 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 just 
        resolution will help prevent future genocides.

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 realize a just resolution; and
            (2) calls upon the President in the President's annual 
        message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about 
        April 24, to accurately 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.
                                 <all>