[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 46 (Tuesday, April 23, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H1493-H1494]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         COMMEMORATION AND REMEMBRANCE OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I rise as a member of the Congressional 
Caucus on Armenian Issues to commemorate tomorrow's eighth annual 
Capitol Hill observance of the 87th anniversary of the Armenian 
genocide. I do want to thank my colleagues on the caucus, including the 
Chairs, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) and the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg), for their work in organizing the 
tribute that will take place tomorrow evening. This observance does 
take place every year on April 24. I hope that my comments a day 
earlier will attest to my earnestness and passion about the issue.
  It was on that date 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; 
and 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 our United States 
Ambassador,

[[Page H1494]]

Henry Morgenthau, who accused the Turkish authorities of ``giving the 
death warrant to a whole race.'' The founder of the modern Turkish 
nation, Kemal Ataturk, condemned the crimes perpetrated by his 
predecessors. Yet this forthright and sober analysis has been ignored 
by 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 what we believe, 
and that is, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are 
condemned to repeat them. We have seen this 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, mass killings in Kurdistan, Rwanda, Burundi, and Bosnia. Many of 
these situations are ongoing, and there seems little sense of urgency 
or moral imperative to resolve them.
  This was brought home to me when I visited the memorial of the 
genocide in Yerevan, Armenia, when I led the delegation there several 
years ago; and here in the United States I have seen the anguish on the 
faces of the survivors and I have talked to the families who have lost 
loved ones during that holocaust of the Armenians.
  Commemoration of the Armenian genocide 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 peacefully and with mutual respect.
  Last year, I sent a letter to our Maryland legislators with several 
of my colleagues here in the House urging their support of the Maryland 
Day of Remembrance. I am pleased to say that last April, Maryland 
joined 27 other States to pass resolutions condemning the Armenian 
genocide. I am proud to have joined 161 of my House colleagues in 
sending a letter to President Bush urging him to appropriately 
acknowledge the Armenian genocide in his April 24 commemoration 
statement. We urge President Bush to follow Senator Bob Dole's message 
to simply ``state the truth.'' There was an English poet who once said, 
``Truth is beauty, beauty, truth. We ask for the truth.''

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