[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             PROTECTING THE MEMORY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Radanovich) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) for their work 
to introduce the resolution this week which will ensure that the United 
States of America continues to play an active role in protecting the 
memory of the Armenian Genocide that began 85 years ago.
  As we so unfortunately see in Kosovo today, documenting the horrors 
of genocide, or ethnic cleansing as they call it, as it is called and 
it is supposed to be an euphemism I am sure for the murderers, it is 
vital to get these records if we are ever to stop such actions from 
occurring again on this Earth.
  The resolution that is being introduced calls upon the President of 
the United States to collect and house all relevant U.S. records 
relating to the Armenian Genocide and provide them to Congress, the 
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Armenian Genocide Museum in 
Yerevan, Armenia.
  It is necessary to do this because there are many who live in denial. 
Sadly, among those who live in denial are those in the government of 
Turkey, 85 years later, that somehow continue to deny what we know from 
repeated testimony of thousands of immigrants, and we knew at the time 
from reporters and others.

                              {time}  1345

  The Turkish government continues to deny what occurred at the 
beginning of this century, just as there are some misguided people who 
still deny the Jewish Holocaust, where 6 million people were murdered 
by the Nazi Germans, and probably some are still denying the murderous 
efforts of Pol Pot in Cambodia, where he and his gang of ideologues 
murdered 2 million Cambodians.
  The innocent civilians in the Balkans, the innocent civilians in 
South Asia, the innocent civilians in the Middle East and in Germany, 
all of those are why we should talk about their problems and their 
genocide on the appropriate occasions.
  No one can take for granted the ability of some people to clearly 
look at the facts and still deny that the facts do not exist. Each year 
we join the world commemoration of the Armenian genocide because it 
must not be forgotten. Time, distance, current events frequently cloud 
the past and reduce horrible events to little more than a footnote in 
history.
  The Armenian genocide is not a footnote. Neither is the Jewish 
Holocaust. Neither are the 2 million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot. 
The 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Turkish government and others, 
and the deep scars left upon those who survived, deserve our vigil, 
because too many want us to forget.
  Even in our country, on the situation in civil rights, where black 
citizens were beaten in the South and other parts of the United States, 
and we passed laws to overcome that, even this generation of young high 
school people does not know what this Nation went through and does not 
know what other nations have gone through.
  Documenting the horrors of the genocide cannot stop those who would 
deny it, any more than the extensive documentation of the Holocaust has 
stopped individuals from denying that abominable period. However, we 
cannot begin the fight against ignorance if we do not preserve the 
records of those crimes as they were committed.
  The Armenian genocide marked the beginning of a barbaric practice in 
the 20th century, and is it not ironic that we are ending the 20th 
century and those practices still exist in the Balkans, as vis-a-vis 
Serbia and its neighbors? By remembering, if we can help prevent future 
actions and punish the guilty in the future, this will be a noble 
cause.
  I recall the Armenians in my own county when I grew up in San Benito 
County and in Long Beach, and some of the men and women who were maybe 
small children, and their parents got them through the Turkish lines 
and they escaped death. As with other immigrants, including my father, 
the Armenians, the Jews, the Cambodians, and we have 50,000 in Long 
Beach, California, from Cambodia, they know what freedom means. They 
know what the United States means.
  I will never forget a dinner when Governor George Deukmejian, a child 
of Armenian parents who had escaped, had many of his Armenian friends 
and supporters at that dinner. Tears streamed down all of our eyes. 
These people were in their seventies and their eighties, and they knew 
those horrors. They knew the haven that America was, a haven of 
freedom. Some have called it the city on the Hill. What it means is 
this is a place where we would not tolerate that.
  But we thought other countries would not tolerate that, and yet that 
is exactly what happened. They killed people with whom they disagreed, 
whether it be for religion, whether it be the color of their skin. This 
must not happen, and the world should do something about it.

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