[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 296 Engrossed in House (EH)]

<DOC>
H. Res. 296

                In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

                                                      October 29, 2019.
Whereas the United States has a proud history of recognizing and condemning the 
        Armenian Genocide, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman 
        Empire from 1915 to 1923, and providing relief to the survivors of the 
        campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, 
        Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians;
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 against what he described as the empire's ``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'';
Whereas President Woodrow Wilson encouraged the formation of the Near East 
        Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which raised $116,000,000 (over 
        $2,500,000,000 in 2019 dollars) between 1915 and 1930, and the Senate 
        adopted resolutions condemning these massacres;
Whereas 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;
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?'', setting the stage 
        for the Holocaust;
Whereas the United States has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, 
        through the United States Government's May 28, 1951, written statement 
        to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention on the 
        Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through President 
        Ronald Reagan's Proclamation No. 4838 on April 22, 1981, and by House 
        Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, and House Joint 
        Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984; and
Whereas the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 (Public 
        Law 115-441) establishes that atrocities prevention represents a United 
        States national interest, and affirms that it is the policy of the 
        United States to pursue a United States Government-wide strategy to 
        identify, prevent, and respond to the risk of atrocities by 
        ``strengthening diplomatic response and the effective use of foreign 
        assistance to support appropriate transitional justice measures, 
        including criminal accountability, for past atrocities'': Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is 
the policy of the United States to--
            (1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition 
        and remembrance;
            (2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the 
        United States Government with denial of the Armenian Genocide or any 
        other genocide; and
            (3) encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the 
        Armenian Genocide, including the United States role in the humanitarian 
        relief effort, and the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day 
        crimes against humanity.
            Attest:

                                                                          Clerk.