[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 45 (Thursday, April 21, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 COMMEMORATION OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______


                               speech of

                           HON. STEPHEN HORN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 19, 1994

  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in commemorating the 
tragedy of the Armenian genocide which began its ugliest phase in April 
1915. I add my voice to the chorus of vigilance that remembers the sad 
fate of over 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman empire and the 
millions more driven from their homeland.
  On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman empire systematized a campaign of 
racial hatred which had already killed over 300,000 Armenians since 
1894. On that date, authorities in Istanbul ordered the arrest of 
hundreds of Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders. 
These leaders then exiled or murdered.
  Within months, thousands of Armenians in Asia Minor and Turkish 
Armenia had been deported and the 250,000 Armenians serving in the 
Ottoman army had been disarmed and placed in forced labor battalions 
where most starved or were executed. Women, children, and the elderly 
were put on death marches where they were subjected to rape, torture, 
and mutilation.
  By 1923, the destruction of the Armenian culture within the confines 
of present-day Turkey was all but complete; 500,000 Armenians had 
escaped into Russia or emigrated to Europe or the United States. At the 
beginning of the First World War there were more than 2.5 million 
Armenians living in the Ottoman empire; today fewer than 80,000 
declared Armenians remain in Turkey.
  Sadly, the Armenian genocide was only the first example of this 
savagery in the 20th century. Adolf Hitler excused his own genocidal 
campaign against the Jewish people by citing the world's apparent 
indifference to the Armenian genocide. The killing fields of Cambodia, 
the ruthless battles between Hutu and Tutsi, and ``ethnic cleansing'' 
in the former Yugoslavia are only the most recent examples of man's 
inhumanity to man. We must use today's commemoration of the Armenian 
genocide to once again remind ourselves and the world that the words 
``let us remember'' announce an active cause.

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