[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 320 Introduced in Senate (IS)]








109th CONGRESS
  1st Session
S. RES. 320

   Calling on 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.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           November 18, 2005

    Mr. Ensign (for himself and Mr. Durbin) submitted the following 
  resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
   Calling on 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.

Whereas 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 more than 2,500-year presence of 
        Armenians in their historic homeland;
Whereas, on May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers issued the joint statement of 
        England, France, and Russia that explicitly charged, for the first time 
        ever, another government of committing ``a crime against humanity'';
Whereas that 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'';
Whereas 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'';
Whereas in a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were 
        tried and convicted on charges of organizing and executing massacres 
        against the Armenian people;
Whereas the officials who were the chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, 
        Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of 
        the Navy Jemal, were tried by military tribunals, found guilty, and 
        condemned to death for their crimes, however, the punishments imposed by 
        the tribunals were not enforced;
Whereas the Armenian Genocide and the failure to carry out the death sentence 
        against Enver, Talaat, and Jemal are documented with overwhelming 
        evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Russia, 
        the United Kingdom, 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;
Whereas the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States 
        holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, 
        especially in its holdings for the Department of State under Record 
        Group 59, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available 
        to the public and interested institutions;
Whereas 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;
Whereas Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the 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 Secretary 
        of State Robert Lansing that the ``Department approves your procedure . 
        . . to stop Armenian persecution'';
Whereas Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Congress, agreed to July 18, 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 that time, were enduring 
        ``starvation, disease, and untold suffering'';
Whereas President Woodrow Wilson agreed with such Concurrent Resolution and 
        encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, 
        which was incorporated by the Act of August 6, 1919, 66th Congress (41 
        Stat. 273, chapter 32);
Whereas, from 1915 through 1930, Near East Relief contributed approximately 
        $116,000,000 to aid survivors of the Armenian Genocide, including aid to 
        approximately 132,000 Armenian orphans;
Whereas Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed to May 11, 1920, stated in 
        part, ``the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the 
        subcommittee 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'';
Whereas such Senate Resolution followed the report to the Senate of the American 
        Military Mission to Armenia, which was led by General James Harbord, 
        dated April 13, 1920, 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'';
Whereas, 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;
Whereas Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ``genocide'' in 1944, and who was 
        the earliest proponent of the Convention on the Prevention and 
        Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive 
        example of genocide in the 20th century;
Whereas the first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations, United 
        Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1), dated December 11, 1946, 
        (which was adopted at the urging of Raphael Lemkin), and the Convention 
        on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, done at Paris December 9, 
        1948, recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United 
        Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards;
Whereas, in 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian 
        Genocide as ``precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern 
        term `crimes against humanity' is intended to cover'' and as a precedent 
        for the Nuremberg tribunals;
Whereas such 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'';
Whereas House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, adopted by the House of 
        Representatives on April 8, 1975, resolved that ``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'';
Whereas Proclamation 4838 of April 22, 1981 (95 Stat. 1813) issued by President 
        Ronald Reagan, stated, in part, that ``[l]ike 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'';
Whereas House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, adopted by the House of 
        Representatives on September 10, 1984, resolved that ``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'';
Whereas, in August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United 
        Nations Sub-Commission 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'';
Whereas such 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 and 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'';
Whereas the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal 
        agency that serves as the board of trustees of the United States 
        Holocaust Memorial Museum pursuant to section 2302 of title 36, United 
        States Code, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the Museum 
        would exhibit information regarding the Armenian Genocide and the Museum 
        has since done so;
Whereas, reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression by the Department of State (which 
        was later retracted) that asserted 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'';
Whereas, on June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to 
        H.R. 3540, 104th Congress (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;
Whereas President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated, ``[t]his 
        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'';
Whereas President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated, ``[o]n 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''; and
Whereas, 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: Now, therefore, be 
        it
    Resolved, That the Senate--
            (1) calls on 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 on 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>