[Congressional Bills 116th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 150 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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116th CONGRESS
  1st Session
S. RES. 150

Expressing the sense of the Senate that it is the policy of the United 
     States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official 
                      recognition and remembrance.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             April 9, 2019

Mr. Menendez (for himself, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Van Hollen, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. 
    Markey, Ms. Warren, Mr. Peters, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Wyden, Ms. 
 Duckworth, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Reed, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Udall, 
and Ms. Harris) submitted the following resolution; which was referred 
                 to the Committee on Foreign Relations

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Expressing the sense of the Senate that it is the policy of the United 
     States to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official 
                      recognition and remembrance.

Whereas the United States has a proud history of recognizing and condemning the 
        Armenian Genocide, the killing of an estimated 1,500,000 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, Sr., 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 ``a campaign of 
        race extermination,'' and, on July 16, 1915, was instructed 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 Near East Relief, 
        chartered by an Act of Congress, which raised approximately $116,000,000 
        (more than $2,500,000,000 in 2019 dollars) between 1915 and 1930, and 
        the Senate adopted resolutions condemning the 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 the Crime 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, ``Who, 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--

    (1) through the May 28, 1951, written statement of the United States 
Government to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention 
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and Proclamation 
No. 4838 issued by President Ronald Reagan on April 22, 1981; and

    (2) by House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, agreed to April 8, 
1975, and House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, agreed to September 
10, 1984; and

Whereas the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 (Public 
        Law 115-441) establishes that the prevention of atrocities is a national 
        interest of the United States 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 Senate that it is the policy 
of the United States--
            (1) to commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official 
        recognition and remembrance;
            (2) to reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise 
        associate the United States Government with denial of the 
        Armenian Genocide or any other genocide; and
            (3) to encourage education and public understanding of the 
        facts of the Armenian Genocide, including the role of the 
        United States in humanitarian relief efforts, and the relevance 
        of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day crimes against humanity.
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