[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]

 
                       THE GENOCIDE OF ARMENIANS

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, today we are commemorating the 79th 
anniversary of the Armenian genocide. This is the week when people 
around the world pause to remember the victims of the intentional 
genocide of the Armenian people in 1915-23.
  There are those who deny that this atrocity ever occurred. But there 
is an overwhelming and objectively undeniable body of historical 
documentation and eyewitness account proving beyond a doubt that the 
appalling events of 1915-23 occurred during the time of the Ottoman 
Empire. Because of systematic and intentional policies, up to 1.5 
million Armenians perished.
  This commemoration is not intended as a condemnation of our ally, the 
Republic of Turkey. But our mutual interests with our NATO partner and 
our close friendship with, and respect for, the Turkish people are not 
reasons to rewrite or deny historical fact. The historical evidence 
that the Armenian people were the victim of a genocide is unambiguous. 
Indeed, the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, recognized the 
crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire. As I've discussed on this floor 
before, in a 1926 interview Ataturk himself stated that those 
responsible ``should have been made to account for the lives of 
millions of our Chistian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse 
from their homes and massacred.''
  Denying the events of 1915-23 is as offensive and corrupting as 
denying the Holocaust in the 1940's. The current Turkish Government is 
not the issue. The issue is the role of the preceding government in the 
Armenian genocide. The present German Government has acknowledged the 
crimes of the Holocaust. That acknowledgment by Germany has enhanced 
its international and moral standing. An acknowledgment by Turkey 
relative to the actions of an earlier government would do the same.
  We owe it to the victims of the Armenian genocide--and we owe it to 
ourselves and the future--to perpetuate the memory and historical 
record of what happened.
  Mr. President, we commemorate today the first genocide of the 20th 
century, but woefully not the last. In our commemoration today, let us 
pledge our best efforts to honor the innocent victims of the past and 
work to secure a future free of such evil.

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