[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 47 (Thursday, April 13, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E581-E582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. TOM BLILEY

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 12, 2000

  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Speaker, today in remembrance of the Armenian 
Genocide of 1915-1923, we protect the memory of the Armenian Genocide 
that began over 85 years ago.
  Throughout my tenure in Congress, I have taken to the floor of the 
U.S. House of Representatives to urge my colleagues to recognize the 
genocide of the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. I 
continue that tradition again.

[[Page E582]]

  In the shadow of World War I, the Ottoman Turk Government embarked on 
a plan to systematically eliminate the Armenian people from their 
ancestral homeland. The Armenian men who had answered the call to join 
their country's armed forces were isolated and shot. On orders from the 
central government, Turkish soldiers rampaged from town to town, 
brutalizing and butchering the remaining Armenian population. Women and 
children were then forced on a death-march into the Syrian desert. By 
the end of the war, the Ottoman Turks had been successful in 
exterminating 2 out of every 3 Armenians. A million and a half 
Armenians had perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.
  Henry Morgenthau, Sr., then United States Ambassador to Turkey, 
wrote:


       I am confident that the whole history of the human race 
     contains no such horrible episode as this. The great 
     massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost 
     insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian 
     race in 1915.


  It was only 20 years later that Adolf Hitler asked rhetorically, `Who 
remembers the Armenians?' as he began his master plan to annihilate the 
Jews. Those who fail to remember history are condemned to repeat it.
  The years cannot mute the voice of those Armenian survivors whose 
individual accounts of savagery combine to form a bedrock of 
irrefutable evidence. Despite the attempts to hide the records and to 
distort the facts; despite the world's preoccupation with politics and 
strategy, the truth of the Armenian genocide remains.
  The Armenian Genocide marked the beginning of a barbaric practice in 
the Twentieth Century. Now at the beginning of the Twenty-First 
Century, it is even more important to remember, and condemn, these 
horrific crimes against humanity. It is for these reasons that I ask 
you to support House Resolution 398.

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