[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 55 (Wednesday, April 21, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H2243]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  COMMEMORATING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join with some of my 
colleagues who have been here today to commemorate the Armenian 
genocide. This observance takes place every April, for it was in that 
month in 1915 that more than 200 Armenian religious, political and 
intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople and murdered. Over 
the next 8 years persecution of Armenians intensified. By 1923 more 
than 1.5 million had died and another 500,000 had gone into exile. At 
the end of 1923, all of the Armenian residents of Anatolia and western 
Armenia had been either killed or deported.
  The genocide was criticized at the time by U.S. Ambassador Henry 
Morgenthau, who accused the Turkish authorities of, quote, giving the 
death warrant to a whole race, unquote. The founder of the modern 
Turkish Nation, Kemal Ataturk, condemned the crimes perpetrated by his 
predecessors, and yet this forthright and sober analysis has been 
spurned by Turkey and the United States during the last decade.
  The intransigence of this and prior administrations to recognizing 
and commemorating the Armenian Genocide demonstrates our continued 
difficulty in reconciling the lessons of history with real politic 
policies; that is, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are 
condemned to repeat them. We have seen continually in this century the 
abject failure to learn and apply this basic principle. The Armenian 
Genocide has been followed by the Holocaust against the Jews and mass 
killings in Kurdistan, Rwanda, Burundi and the Balkans. Many of these 
situations are ongoing, and in most cases there seems little apparent 
sense of urgency or moral imperative to resolve them.
  Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide is important. It is important 
not only for its acknowledgment of the suffering of the Armenian 
people, but also for establishing a historical truth. It also 
demonstrates that events in Armenia, Nazi Europe and elsewhere should 
be seen not as isolated incidents, but as part of a historical 
continuum showing that the human community still suffers from its basic 
inability to resolve its problems, to resolve them peacefully and with 
mutual respect.
  I hope that today's remarks by Members concerned about Armenia will 
help to renew our commitment and that all of the American people will 
oppose any and all instances of genocide.

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