[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 24, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H1516-H1517]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, earlier today tens of thousands of Armenian

[[Page H1517]]

mourners gathered on the hilltop over the city of Yerevan, the capital 
of Armenia, to remember the Armenian genocide.
  Here in the United States, in the Capitol, we also are remembering. 
It often seems that the world has not learned the crucial lessons of 
the past. We have witnessed awful genocides in nearly every corner of 
the globe, including the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe, and genocides 
in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
  We must pause today and say, ``Never again.'' We must, because the 
cost of the alternative is too high.
  Eighty-six years ago in 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were killed; 300 
Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in 
Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, were rounded up, deported and 
killed. 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets 
and in their homes.
  Most Armenians in America are children or grandchildren of those 
survivors although there are still many survivors amongst us today. I 
sometimes hear voices that ask, ``You know, after all of these years, 
why do we need to keep addressing this?'' After all, some of the 
skeptics say, this was something that ended back in 1915 and the 1920s.
  I suppose that someone who thinks of genocide with that kind of 
detachment, as if it were just something in a textbook, some distant 
memory, as something that happened far away and long ago to a people 
that they never knew, that argument might sound reasonable. But the 
reason we are here today with my colleagues is because we know better, 
because we know that 1.5 million men, women and children who were 
murdered in the genocide are not some abstraction, are not some number 
in a textbook. To those who survived them, they were beloved family 
members and dear friends. They were our fathers and mothers and 
grandparents and uncles and aunts and confidants and neighbors. They 
were individuals who were robbed of their dignity, they were robbed of 
their humanity; and finally, they were robbed of their lives.
  While time has made the events more distant, the pain is no less real 
today than it has ever been. How can it be otherwise when we hear the 
stories of the survivors. How can it be when we are haunted by the 
words of women like Katharine Magarian. Just listen. Three years ago 
she said, ``I saw my father killed when I was 9 years old. We lived in 
an Armenian enclave in Turkey in the mountains. My father was a 
businessman. The Turks, they ride in one day, got all of the men 
together and brought them to the church. Every man came out with hands 
tied behind them. They slaughtered them, like sheep, with long knives.
  ``They all die. Twenty-five people in my family die. You cannot walk, 
they kill you. You walk, they kill you. They did not care who they 
killed. My husband, who was a boy in my village but I did not know him 
then, he saw his mother's head cut off,'' and she goes on describing 
the atrocities that befell her and her family.
  To most Americans these stories are things that, maybe, you have 
heard about or read about. But anyone who grew up in an Armenian 
American family will tell you they knew about these stories their whole 
life. They may not have always known the specifics, but they always 
knew about the pain and hurt and tears. They know there were members of 
their family who died. Why did they die? Because they were Armenian.
  Mr. Speaker, that is why we commemorate the genocide. It is not 
because we cannot let go of history, it is because history will not let 
go of us. We know that silence does not bind up wounds, it only leaves 
those wounds to fester. Because we understand if Turkey is never held 
accountable for the crimes it committed in the past, it only becomes 
more certain that those crimes will occur again in the future.
  Some in Congress and the White House believe that by speaking out on 
the genocide, America would be betraying the Turkish government. By 
failing to speak out, we are betraying our own principles as a free 
people. We cannot sit idle. We cannot let Turkey hide within a fortress 
of lies.
  Mr. Speaker, that is why we will be introducing our resolution on the 
Armenian genocide. I would like to share an old Armenian saying with 
you. The saying is: ``Many a molehill thinks it is a mountain. But the 
mountain? Mountains are too busy being mountains, doing mountain-type 
things and thinking mountain-type thoughts to worry about what being a 
mountain means.''
  I think of America as sometimes being a bit like that mountain. We 
are a Nation that is so busy with our economy, our culture and 
politics, we sometimes forget what it is like to be really an American, 
what it means to be an American. And the way I see it, America means 
standing up for justice. America means speaking out against injustice.

                              {time}  1900

  That is what I urge all of my colleagues to do, and join me in 
recognizing the Armenian genocide and supporting the resolution.
  Recognizing inhumanity is the first step toward healing and 
understanding. The current tensions between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and 
Armenia are deeply rooted in his history, and achieving a just and 
lasting peace and cooperation will only be possible if the past is 
acknowledged. But it will not happen on its own. That's why 
congressional action on the Armenian Genocide resolution is so 
important.
  I believe that those of us who stand for human rights and dignity 
have a responsibility to remember the victims and the survivors. We 
have a responsibility to speak out and to make sure that tragedies like 
this are never allowed to happen again.
  In remembering the Armenian Genocide, we are making a commitment 
against genocide and discrimination. We are making a personal 
commitment to speaking out against injustice wherever we see it.

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