[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 24, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4089-S4090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          GENOCIDE REMEMBERED

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to mark the 81st 
anniversary of the Armenian genocide that took place during the final 
years of the Ottoman Empire. From 1915 to 1923, some 1,500,000 persons 
of Armenian ancestry are reported to have died at the hands of their 
Ottoman rulers, through a deliberate policy of deportation, 
confiscation of property, slave labor, and murder.
  Although we now recognize this policy as genocide, no such word 
existed at the time of its commission. The American Ambassador to the 
Sublime Porte, New Yorker Henry Morgenthau, described the Ottoman 
atrocities as a ``campaign of race extermination.'' A chilling 
prologue, if you will, to the twentieth century.
  The word ``genocide'' comes from the Greek genos (clan or breed) and 
the Latin caedere (to kill). It was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a 
Polish Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1941.
  In the early 1930's, after studying the slaughter of the Armenians, 
Lemkin began a campaign to outlaw the crime now known as genocide. He 
took his case before the Legal Council of the League of Nations in 1933 
but the learned jurists would not heed him. Finally--after the Nazi 
Holocaust shook the conscience of the world--the United Nations adopted 
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of 
Genocide on December 9, 1948. The first human rights treaty of the new 
world body was finally ratified by the United States in 1988. Raphael 
Lemkin's legacy.
  During the Days of Remembrance Commemoration in 1981, Elie Wiesel 
stated:

       Before the planning of the Final Solution, Hitler asked, 
     ``Who remembers the Armenians?'' He was right. No one 
     remembered them, as no one remembered the Jews. Rejected by 
     everyone, they felt expelled from history.

  Mr. President, today the United States Senate pauses to remember the 
Armenian victims of genocide. But remembrance alone is not enough. 
Remembrance must be the first step toward justice and, ultimately, 
toward prevention of future atrocities.
  On December 13, 1995, the Senate adopted Senate Joint Resolution 44, 
concerning the deployment of United States Armed Forces in Bosnia and 
Herzegovina. The resolution affirmed that the population of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina had ``suffered egregious violations of the international 
law of war including * * * the Convention on the Prevention and 
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.'' To redress and punish these 
crimes, the United Nations established the International Criminal 
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The United States must continue to 
support the work of the Tribunal and insist on cooperation with the 
Tribunal as mandated by the Dayton Accords.
  The horrors of this century--beginning with the Armenian genocide--
gave birth to a new vocabulary of inhumanity. As this genocidal century 
draws to a close, let us remember these events, mourn the victims, and 
strengthen our resolve that such outrages never again be perpetrated 
against the human race.
  I thank the Chair and I ask that the text of Ambassador Henry

[[Page S4090]]

Morgenthau's telegram of July 16, 1915, and the 'genocide' entry in the 
Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought be printed in the Record.
  The text follows:

         [Telegram received from Constantinople, July 16, 1915]

     Secretary of State,
     Washington.
       Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is 
     increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it 
     appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress 
     under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion.
       Protests as well as threats are unavailing and probably 
     incite the Ottoman government to more drastic measures as 
     they are determined to disclaim responsibility for their 
     absolute disregard of capitulations and I believe nothing 
     short of actual force which obviously United States are not 
     in a position to exert would adequately meet the situation. 
     Suggest you inform belligerent nations and mission boards of 
     this.
     American Ambassador, Constantinople.
                                                                    ____


                The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought

            [Edited by Alan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass]

[New and revised edition by Alan Bullock and Stephen Trombley assisted 
                            by Bruce Eadie]


                               genocide.

       Term coined by American jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to 
     denote the physical destruction of a national, racial or 
     ethnic population. The term was included in the indictment at 
     Nuremberg of German war criminals accused of involvement in 
     Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. 
     It acquired still wider currency in a United Nations 
     Resolution of 11 December 1946 and UN Convention of 9 
     December 1948 which sought to make genocide a crime under 
     international law. Details of the UN definition of the term 
     are contested, for example by radical critics of colonialism 
     who view as genocide the destruction of the social fabric of 
     a colonized people, but it remains the most widely accepted 
     definition.
       Bibl: L. Kuper, Genocide (Harmondsworth and New York, 
     1981).

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