[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 43 (Tuesday, April 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          ARMENIA GENOCIDE DAY

  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, on April 24 each year, we commemorate the 
anniversary of the first genocide of the 20th century. Beginning on 
April 24, 1915 with the arrest, exile and/or murder of 200 Armenian 
religious, political and intellectual leaders, the Armenian genocide 
continued on through 1923, claiming 1\1/2\ million lives. Sadly, 79 
years later, genocide remains a reality. One need look no further than 
Bosnia to see ethnic extermination in progress.
  Madam President, before planning the final solution, Hitler asked, 
``Who remembers the Armenians?'' As we commemorate the deaths of so 
many innocent people, let us not allow the same question to be asked by 
Serbian leaders.
  I rise today to join my colleagues in an expression of profound 
sadness at the remembrance of the tragic events of the Armenian 
genocide. It was the first occurrence of genocide in the 20th century, 
but it was not the last. We must do all in our power to assure that the 
evils of history do not repeat themselves. That is the only way to 
fully pay tribute to past victims of genocide.
  Madam President, in an era of increased ethnic unrest, we must remain 
ever more vigilant. Almost eight decades after the beginning of the 
genocide in Armenia, ethnic tensions remain in Armenia. It has been 
said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes. 
Let us not forget the past.

  Last Saturday's New York Times described the continuing agony of 
Armenia today--independent but isolated by an immoral economic embargo. 
The United States is able to provide humanitarian aid, but only with 
many delays, and at great cost. Current United States law prohibits aid 
to the Government of Azerbaijan until it lifts the embargo on Armenia. 
This provision--section 907--must remain the law of the land, despite 
the administration's efforts to repeal it. Foreign aid reform may 
happen this year, but I will do all I can to ensure any reform does not 
include the repeal or weakening of section 907. As long as Azerbaijan 
strangles Aremenia, it does not deserve United States aid.
  As we commemorate the victims of the Armenian genocide, we must also 
remember that some would like to repeat the horrors of the past. The 
United States must stand with the brave and long-suffering Armenian 
people, work for lasting peace in the caucasus, and never forget the 
Armenian genocide. I ask unanimous consent that the article on 
Armenia's plight be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 16, 1994]

            War, Blockade and Poverty ``Strangling'' Armenia

                          (By Raymond Bonner)

       Yerevan, Armenia.--Two and a half years after its 
     independence, this tiny Caucasus nation should be enjoying 
     the excitement of new-found freedom. Instead, it is 
     experiencing little but pain.
       The capital has electricity two hours a day, shop after 
     shop is closed, and lines form early for bread and kerosene, 
     rationed and doled by international relief agencies.
       Little wonder people are fleeing. By unofficial accounts, 
     more than half a million people have abandoned Armenia in the 
     last three years, reducing the population to three million in 
     an area slightly larger than New Jersey.
       Although the countryside is still reeling from a 
     catastrophic earthquake in 1988, Armenia's enduring burden is 
     a man-made plague of the post-cold-war era: deadly ethnic 
     warfare and the resulting social, political and economic 
     isolation.
       The battlefield is a tiny mountainous area, Nagorno-
     Karabakh, populated by ethnic Armenians but part of 
     Azerbaijan for 70 years. Since the collapse of the Soviet 
     empire, Nagorno-Karabakh has been waging a war to secede, but 
     this year has been the deadliest. And it has expanded in the 
     last three months, as the Armenian Government, long a not-so-
     secret patron of the Karabakh cause, has itself sent men to 
     fight at the front.


                        suffering from blockage

       But economic warfare can be equally deadly, and one of 
     Azerbaijan's weapons in the war has been a blockage of 
     Armenia. ``It is strangling us,'' a man in a mountain village 
     said, voicing a lament echoed throughout the country.
       This landlocked nation has long been dependent on imports, 
     for more than two-thirds of its food and all of its oil and 
     natural gas. Most of it passed through Azerbaijan. Armenia's 
     neighbor to the west is Turkey. But Turkey backs the 
     Azerbaijanis, and has sealed its border with Armenia. Turkey 
     will not allow even relief aid across its land to Armenia.
       Wheat and oil could reach Armenia through Georgia, 
     Armenia's northern neighbor. But Georgia is being sundered by 
     its own ethnic wars. Trains operate infrequently in Georgia 
     for lack of fuel or because the tracks have been blown up, 
     often by Azerbaijani guerrillas.
       Armenia is so desperate that it hopes to reactivate a 
     nuclear power plant that was shut after the earthquake in 
     1988. The United States contended that the Soviet-built plant 
     was unsafe, but Russia agreed in March to provide nuclear 
     fuel and technicians so that the plant could be reopened.
       ``At this point, Armenia has no option, just no option,'' 
     said Steve Tashjian, Armenia's Deputy Prime Minister for 
     Energy. ``It is unfair to tell the people of Armenia, we will 
     not turn the lights on for you with nuclear power.''


                          new clinic is unused

       In the village of Shirakamut, which is midway on the rail 
     line between Yerevan and Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, there 
     is a sparkling medical clinic. It has a modern forced-air 
     heating system and fluorescent light bulbs. But the clinic is 
     cold and empty--no heat, no light. And it has no medicines, 
     not even bandages.
       The clinic, at the base of mountains on the north side of 
     the village, was built by Liechtenstein after the earthquake, 
     which killed more than 300 of the 3,000 villagers and at 
     least 25,000 people in northern Armenia.
       ``I lost my mother and father, and a brother, and my 
     daughter,'' 25-year-old Nora Torasian said, standing in the 
     kitchen of her home--a metal container 10 feet wide and 30 
     feet long where she lives with her husband and two children.
       More than half of the 700 families in Shirakamut live in 
     such containers, which were brought in as temporary shelter 
     after the earthquake. There is no running water, no 
     electricity, no heat.
       Throughout Armenia, industry operates at 30 percent of 
     capacity. Almost no one in Shirakamut, which was called 
     Nalband before independence, has a job. A textile factory, 
     which specialized in men's handkerchiefs, was destroyed in 
     the earthquake--60 women were killed--but rebuilt. Today, the 
     sheds comprising the factory are unused, for lack of raw 
     materials and power.
       One of the fortunate in Skirakamut is Mrs. Torasian's 
     husband. He is one of two men working at the train station, 
     which employed 100 a few years ago. But his salary, 170 drams 
     a month, which is 40 drams more than a schoolteacher earns, 
     buys little. A loaf of bread costs 25 drams, a kilogram (2.2 
     pounds) of butter 600 drams, and a flat of 30 eggs, the 
     customary way they are sold, 500 drams.
       Like just about everyone in Armenia, the Torasian family 
     lives hand to mouth, scrounging a few things here, selling 
     them there.
       ``We took two sacks of potatoes to the market, but the 
     money we got was not enough to buy three kilos of sugar,'' 
     Mrs. Torasian said. ``I work hard to grow the potatoes, and I 
     don't want to sell them.''
       The family eats potatoes for breakfast and dinner.
       ``I forgot what meat is,'' Mrs. Torasian's 72-year old 
     mother-in-law said. ``But I know what potatoes are, and they 
     know me.''
       As the Torasian family talked, a parakeet chirped from a 
     cage in the corner of the rusting container, which leaks when 
     it rains. The bird was one of two that had belonged to Mrs. 
     Torasian's sister-in-law, who lives in Yerevan. The other one 
     froze to death this winter. But as soon as the weather warms, 
     the family will release this one. They cannot afford to keep 
     it. It eats food the family needs.
       To alleviate the hardship, would the people of Armenia 
     allow Nagorno-Karabakh to remain part of Azerbaijan? Based on 
     interviews and conversations, from streets of the capital to 
     villages like Shirakamut, the answer seems to be an 
     unequivocal no.
       For Armenians, the war is about memories, and fears and 
     vows of ``Never again!'' In the early part of the century, 
     word reached the West of mass killings of Armenian civilians 
     at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, through forced 
     resettlement, starvation and shooting.
       The Armenians talk of the ``genocide,'' and in fighting for 
     Karabakh, they say they are fighting to prevent another 
     deportation, another genocide. This time, they say, it is at 
     the hands of the Azerbaijanis, a Turkic people, whom the 
     Armenians even call Turks.


                        tide turned in december

       At the end of last year, it seemed that Nagorno-Karabakh 
     had won the war. It controlled virtually all of the enclave, 
     and a wide swath of territory ringing it. Then in December, 
     Azerbaijan started a counter-offensive. As the Azerbaijanis 
     continued to pour men into battle, the Armenian Government 
     began to worry. The call went out for volunteers. Many 
     responded.
       Among them was Arsen Gevorkian, who was laid to rest at the 
     Martyrs Cemetery one afternoon in March. A 17-year-old 
     aspiring artist, Mr. Gevorkian had gone to fight in Karabakh 
     ``to save his land, to protect his brothers and sisters from 
     the Turks,'' an aunt said through tears.
       The Armenian Government has long contended that the only 
     Armenian citizens fighting in Karabakh have been volunteers 
     like Mr. Gevorkian and that no Government troops have fought 
     there. But the Martyrs Cemetery tells a different story.
       While dirt was being shoveled over Mr. Gevorkian's coffin, 
     soldiers in camouflage fatigues struggled under the weight of 
     the open coffin bearing the body of Gagik Stepanian, 27, his 
     head still bandaged from the wounds that killed him.
       He died on March 16 during heavy fighting on a mountain 
     pass in the Kelbajar region of Azerbaijan, said his 
     commanding officer, Alik Yeghoian. Six more of his soldiers 
     were killed in the battle, he said. All of them, Mr. Yeghoian 
     said, were members of the Armenian Government's Internal 
     Forces, a special military branch of the Ministry of Internal 
     Affairs.


                        troops called volunteers

       In an interview, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Vano 
     Siradeghian, said any Internal Affairs men who had fought in 
     Azerbaijan were ``volunteers,'' having gone to the war ``on 
     their vacation.''
       But there is evidence to the contrary. A few feet from Mr. 
     Stepanian's grave a mound of dirt covers the coffin of Lieut. 
     Karapet Deleyan. He was killed on March 3, in a firefight 
     with Azerbaijani forces in Fuzuli, which is just outside 
     Nagorno-Karabakh on the southeast, said his brother, 
     Haroutun, and three friends worked on the gravesite.
       The friends said Lieutenant Deleyan had been an officer in 
     the Internal Forces for four years and had been sent to other 
     places in Azergaijan to fight. ``He was sent from here to 
     there when he was needed,'' one said.
       Whether direct Armenian participation will draw in 
     outsiders like Turkey and Russia, as some Armenians and 
     diplomats fear, it is certain that until the war ends, the 
     transition from Communism to capitalism will have to wait.

  Mr. DOLE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MITCHELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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