[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 45 (Tuesday, April 11, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H2095]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      COMMEMORATING THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sherwood). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow evening on this floor there will 
be a special order commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Armenian 
Genocide. I will not be present because of a conflict tomorrow evening, 
and, therefore, I chose this evening to rise in remembrance of all of 
those who perished during the Armenian Genocide. The commemoration of 
the Turkish persecution of its Armenian citizens is important because 
only by educating ourselves about the past can we prevent repetition of 
similar tragic situations in the future.
  April 24 is a special day for the Armenian people. It marks the day 
that 200 Armenian leaders were arrested in Constantinople and murdered. 
This was not an isolated incident, rather, it was the beginning of a 
chain of persecution that had begun under the rule of Ottoman Sultan 
Abdul.
  In just 2 years, between 1894 to 1896, 300,000 Armenians had lost 
their lives. This event marked the coming of years of oppression, 
torture and murder for the Armenian-Turkish population.
  After Sultan Abdul's reign was over, a new group called the Young 
Turks came to power. They made pan-Turkism the national ideology, and 
they set out to rid Turkey of all its minority groups, mainly its 
Armenians. By 1923, 1.5 million Armenians had been slaughtered and more 
than 500,000 had been exiled from their homes.
  Less than a century ago, the massacre of the Armenian people was 
unknown to the world. To this day it is still denied by the Turkish 
government, just as the Nazis two decades later denied the Holocaust. 
Both of these atrocities could have been prevented, or at least 
mitigated, if the public had been aware of them. Sadly, it was only 
after the world learned of the Holocaust and the depths to which human 
beings could sink in their treatment of each other that the massacre of 
the Armenian population of Turkey gained attention as genocide.
  As we aspire to attain universal human rights for all, we need to 
have a full knowledge and understanding of the truth. Although we are 
much more aware of human rights violations, they are still occurring to 
this day. From the torture of political prisoners, to the Armenian 
genocide, to the repression of Kurdish people by Turkey and Iraq, to 
the human rights issues in Kosovo, we can see ethnic cleansing is still 
in existence. But we can also see the worldwide concern, and we have 
been able to act to protect innocents.
  The denial of this by the Turkish government needs to end and an open 
and honest acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide must be made before 
significant progress can be made in Turkish-Armenian relations. To 
prevent such crimes against humanity from recurring, we must intensify 
our efforts to establish a growing respect for the truth and oppose and 
condemn human rights violations wherever they may occur.

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