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
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.