[Congressional Bills 110th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 106 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 106
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
March 14, 2007
Mr. Durbin (for himself, Mr. Ensign, Mr. Schumer, Ms. Snowe, Ms.
Stabenow, Mr. Coleman, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Sununu, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Dodd,
Mr. Kerry, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Lieberman, Mrs. Feinstein, Ms. Mikulski,
Mr. Reed, Mr. Allard, Mrs. Dole, Mr. Lautenberg, Mr. Brown, Ms.
Klobuchar, Mr. Whitehouse, and Mr. Menendez) 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, but 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 that ``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 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'';
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 Government of Turkey acknowledged the Armenian
Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims;
Whereas 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'';
Whereas 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''; 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.
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